On the anniversary of its first flight, NASA’s Ingenuity minicopter visited the Perseverance Landing Module, which landed on the planet’s surface.
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The Perseverance rover landed on Mars on February 18, 2021 – when the spacecraft entered the atmosphere of the red planet at hypersonic speeds, protected by a polymeric heat shield and a cone-shaped casing.
After the atmosphere slowed it to supersonic speeds, the largest parachute ever sent to Mars opened to further reduce its speed. Eventually the casing and the parachute crashed and one a rocket-propelled “cradle” safely delivered the rover to its final destination.
It was the same series of events as when the Curiosity rover landed, but the Perseverance differed in that it was the most carefully documented grounding to date, thanks to a plethora of cameras and instruments that recorded the descent.
Perseverance launched the Ingenuity helicopter in April 2021, and the tiny drone took off into the red sky on April 19 to embark on a series of test flightswhich should have lasted only about 30 days.
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Instead, Ingenuity has proven remarkably persistent and tenacious: it has flown 26 times so far, taking on increasingly ambitious missions, including reconnaissance of the Martian as it scans the area.
A year later, also on April 19, at 11:37 a.m. Martian time, Ingenuity was ordered to fly to the parachute and the shield — reaching a height of 8 meters during the 159-second flight and rising to a height of 192 meters.
Ingenuity, navigating a pre-planned runway, bypassed the wreck and made a total of ten shots before returning to its designated landing site, which was 75 feet away; with this, the total flight time of Ingenuity has become 49 minutes – read the NASA in its communication.
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