NASA Ingenuity Helicopter Successfully Completes Second Flight, Aims to Fly Faster

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter successfully performed its second test flight on Mars, breaking its previous milestone.

The New York Times said Ingenuity autonomously rose off the red surface of Mars at 5:33 a.m. Eastern time (2:33 p.m. in Jezero crater on Mars) and stirred up a cloud of dust as it climbed. It ascended to a height of 16 feet, shifted seven feet sideways by tilting itself by five degrees, hovered and rotated to point its color camera in several directions, and then landed. This flight lasted 59.1 seconds.

"It sounds simple, but there are many unknowns regarding how to fly a helicopter on Mars," Håvard Grip, Ingenuity's chief pilot, said in a NASA news release. "That's why we're here - to make these unknowns known."

Ingenuity's Latest Takeoff: What Makes Second Flight Different From First?

Photos from the Ingenuity Helicopter's second test flight were taken differently from the first, allowing the team to confirm the flight's performance.

"For the first flight, one of the cameras was fully zoomed in on the takeoff and landing zone," Justin Maki, Perseverance project imaging scientist and Mastcam-Z deputy principal investigator at JPL explained.

For the second flight, Maki said they zoomed that camera out a bit for a wider field of view to capture more of the flight."

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's second test flight met the team's expectations, proving that their prior computer modeling was accurate, according to Bob Balaram, chief engineer for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

"We have two flights of Mars under our belts, which means that there is still a lot to learn during this month of Ingenuity," he added.

The second operational test flight took place just three days after the first, and further flights are planned in the immediate future.

NASA Ingenuity Helicopter's Previous Milestones

The Ingenuity helicopter is a preview of a new aerial capability that NASA might use in the future, and it was applied to Perseverance, a rover that cost billions to send to Mars to look for evidence of extinct microbial life. Despite the fact that the tiny rotorcraft was just a fraction of the cost of the mission it was part of - $85 million - it contains advanced computer hardware and software. The project also wanted NASA engineers to come up with solutions to major engineering issues.

NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter has been racking up accomplishments on Mars, which resembles the Wright Brothers' first flight on Earth, after resolving pre-flight problems that caused the first test flight to be delayed.

The Ingenuity Helicopter makes history on Apr. 19 when it becomes the first powered aircraft to fly on another planet.

The Ingenuity team decided to call the flight area of the Ingenuity Helicopter the "Wright Brothers Field," in honor of the Wright Brothers.

"Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world," announced Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Associate Administrator for Science.

The most challenging was figuring out how to make helicopter travel in 1/100th of the air contained on Earth's surface, which is difficult to do without. The team behind Ingenuity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory resolved these challenges by using ultralight materials that could rotate at 2,400 revolutions per minute.

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