Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

I’m 50! Saturday Night Live’s Molly Shannon. Image credit: SNL

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has performed a Molly Shannon maneuver – “I’m 50!”

The craft made its 50^th flight on April 13, soaring to its highest altitude to date.

Stats: Horizontal distance covered, roughly 1,056 feet (322 meters); Maximum altitude roughly 59 feet (18 meters) – the highest altitude reached to date; Hit a ground speed of roughly 10.3 miles per hour (4.60 meters per second); Duration of flight 145.7 seconds.

This image was acquired on April 13, 2023 (Sol 763 of the Perseverance rover mission) at the local mean solar time of 15:07:25. This was the date of Ingenuity’s 50th flight.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

White knuckle flights

After its milestone-making mission, the craft touched down near the half-mile-wide (800-meter-wide) “Belva Crater” on the Red Planet.

With Flight 50 under its rotors, the helicopter team plans to perform another repositioning flight before exploring the “Fall River Pass” region of Jezero Crater.

“We are not in Martian Kansas anymore,” said Josh Anderson, Ingenuity operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. “We’re flying over the dried-up remnants of an ancient river that is filled with sand dunes, boulders, and rocks, and surrounded by hills that could have us for lunch. And while we recently upgraded the navigation software onboard to help determine safe airfields, every flight is still a white-knuckler.”

Built with many off-the-shelf components, such as smartphone processors and cameras, Ingenuity is now 23 Earth months and 45 flights beyond its expected lifetime. The craft’s first flight took place on April 19, 2021.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter flying through the Red Planet’s skies. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The rotorcraft has now flown for roughly 89.2 minutes in total and collectively more than 7.1 miles (11.6 kilometers) in distance.

Electronic earshot

According to JPL, beyond facing more challenging terrain, Ingenuity will also fly at a greater frequency in the coming days. That flight rate is due to the helicopter needing to remain within “electronic earshot” of the busily-working NASA Perseverance rover. With its auto-navigation capability, the Perseverance robot can wheel hundreds of meters each day.

Ingenuity helicopter is enabling looks at future aerial craft for Mars exploration.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages the project for NASA Headquarters. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development.

AeroVironment Inc., Qualcomm, and SolAero also provided design assistance and major vehicle components. Lockheed Space designed and manufactured the Mars Helicopter Delivery System.

A range of less-expensive landers, rovers and aerial vehicles are foreseen to help advance a sustainable human presence on Mars.
Image credit: Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS)/Chuck Carter (Used with permission)