NASA’s Creativity Helicopter has resumed flight Mars In its 32nd flight, the Creation traveled about 308 feet (94 meters), stayed aloft for more than 55 seconds, and reached a top speed of 10.5 mph (17.1 km / h), according to the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which operates the Mars Helicopter mission.
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According to Space, this was the 32nd ever creative flight and the second this month, as the 4-pound (1.8 kg) helicopter took off on September 6.
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That previous flight brought the helicopter closer to the ancient river delta at the bottom of Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometer-wide hole in the ground that the helicopter and its itinerant robotic partner have explored since February 2021.
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Perseverance has been studying the delta for several months, and since July the car-sized rover has collected four rock samples, two of them from rocks rich in organic molecules, the carbon-containing building blocks of life.
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If all goes according to plan, researchers will be able to study this material in detail here on Earth, as NASA and the European Space Agency collaborate to bring probe samples to our planet, possibly as early as 2033.
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The sample return process includes two equally innovative helicopters that can carry samples from one or more research depots on a rocket that launches them from the Red Planet.
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