On Sunday, Ingenuity demonstrated once again that it was the little Mars helicopter that could. NASA reported that Ingenuity had successfully completed its third test flight earlier in the day, flying further and faster than it ever had in tests conducted on Earth.
On Sunday, Ingenuity demonstrated once again that it was the little Mars helicopter that could. NASA reported that Ingenuity had successfully completed its third test flight earlier in the day, flying further and faster than it ever had in tests conducted on Earth. Ingenuity carried out its third flight at 1:31 a.m. ET, although NASA began receiving the data at 10:16 a.m. ET. The helicopter rose 16 feet (5 meters), which is the same altitude as its second test flight, and flew 164 feet (50 meters) downrange. Ingenuity’s flight lasted 80 seconds, the space agency said, during which it managed to reach a top speed of 6.6 feet per second (2 meters per second). On Friday, Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a status update that the helicopter team’s plan since day one has been to prepare, fly, analyze the data, and then “plan for an even bolder test in the next flight.” When you compare today’s flight to Ingenuity’s second flight on Thursday, you can definitely see Grip wasn’t kidding. Only a few days ago, Ingenuity traveled seven feet (two meters) to the east and back on a 51.
