NASA made history The ingenuity of the Mars helicopter It will make its third flight on the Red Planet this weekend, if all goes according to plan.
The creativity team targeted a surprise attack on the early hours of Sunday (April 25) number three. The flight plan calls for Ingenuity to rise about 16.5 feet (5 meters) above the floor of the Jezero Mars Crater, cover a total distance of 330 feet (100 meters) and stay high for 80 seconds, said lead pilot of NASA’s Harvard Grip. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Write on a blog post today (23 April).
Grib did not give an estimate of the time for takeoff but said data and images are expected to begin descending to Earth around 10:16 ET (1416 GMT) on Sunday.
Video: Zoom in on your first creative helicopter flight on the surface of Mars
The first two trips of greatness are not involved. On it First pilot flightWhat happened on Monday (April 19), creativity immediately fluctuated, reaching a maximum height of about 10 feet (3 meters) and staying high for 39.1 seconds. On Thursday (22 April) a solar powered helicopter It stays on the air for about 52 seconds, It rises more than 16.5 feet (5 meters) and moves horizontally for a total of 13 feet (4 meters).
During that second trip, Ingenuity took a photo of the Jezero Floor and a trail drawn by its biggest partner, NASA. Persistence Rover. This is “the first color image of the surface of Mars taken by an airplane while it is soaring,” NASA officials wrote in comments for the newly released image, which Grip posted on its blog today. (Capture ingenuity during its maiden flight too, but apparently only with a black and white navigation camera.)
Creativity is a technology show designed to demonstrate that aerial vehicles can operate on Mars. Can a successful aviation campaign Open the red planet sky For intense exploration, NASA officials said.
The helicopters landed steadfastly on February 18 and deployed from the rover on April 3 to prepare for the month-long flight campaign, which ended in early May. The creativity team aims to make a total of five trips during that period, with each trip more ambitious than the previous.
Mike Wall is a writerAbroad“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; image by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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