Ingenuity landed on Mars aboard the Perserverance, mounted on the side of the rover, the February 18th. Since then, the rover has begun to travel shorter distances on the surface of the red planet and send clear color images back to Earth.
But what everyone is waiting for is that the small, 1.8 kilogram, helicopter-like drone will make its first flight. Never before has any human spacecraft flown on Mars.
But now the premiere flight will have to wait a few more days. The flight that had been planned for early Monday morning Swedish time will now not be completed until Wednesday at the earliest, Nasa writes in its website. This then an instrument that will monitor that everything works as it should, itself has not worked as intended.
But otherwise the helicopter works, writes Nasa.
This Wednesday, April 7, Ingenuity’s rotor blades were tested, which were allowed to spin for a while without the craft being allowed to take off.
Ingenuity will conduct its flight at an altitude of three meters above the ground, but since Mars’ atmosphere is only one percent as thick as Earth’s, the flight altitude is comparable to that of the small helicopter that would have flown at an altitude of 30,000 meters on Earth.
In any case, there will be no longer flights. The design only allows a 90-second journey and the drone is only intended to operate for 31 days.
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