NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter: Faster, Farther on Third Flight; Goes Beyond Tests Conducted on Earth

Once again, Ingenuity proved that it was the tiny Mars helicopter that could. According to NASA, Ingenuity had completed its third test flight on Sunday, flying higher and quicker than it had ever passed in experiments undertaken on Earth.

Although NASA received the data at 10:16 a.m. ET, Ingenuity completed its third flight at 1:31 a.m. ET. The helicopter climbed 16 feet (5 meters) and soared 164 feet (50 meters) downrange, the same height as its second test flight. The spacecraft Ingenuity flew for 80 seconds, reaching a peak speed of 6.6 feet per second, according to NASA (2 meters per second).

Ingenuity's chief pilot at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Håvard Grip said in a status update that the helicopter team's plan has been to train, fly, and evaluate the results. Grip added they're planning for an even "bolder test in the next flight."

When comparing today's flight to Ingenuity's second flight on Thursday, it's clear that Grip wasn't joking. Just a few days earlier, Ingenuity soared seven feet (two meters) east and back in a 51.9-second run. Ingenuity had covered almost half the length of a football field in 80 seconds after just a few days.

"Today's flight was what we planned for, and yet it was nothing short of amazing," Dave Lavery, the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at NASA headquarters, said in a news statement published by the space agency on Sunday. "With this flight, we are demonstrating critical capabilities that will enable the addition of an aerial dimension to future Mars missions."

How NASA Recorded Human Ingenuity's New Accomplishment

NASA's Ingenuity team was able to catch what happened during the helicopter's third flight by adding orders, according to Jet Propulsion Laboratory's report. These commands helped them to capture more photographs of the Red Planet from the Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter lies on the covering of Mars as NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. In the region known as the Jezero crater on Mars, NASA's Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to recover.

NASA's aircraft, on the other hand, was equipped with a color camera, which was also used to record the helicopter's first photographs during its second test flight.

Aside from these, NASA's Ingenuity unit took additional measures that are intended to have information that could be used by the space agency's space helicopter on future aerial missions. Meanwhile, NASA's space experts used the black-and-white navigation camera on Ingenuity to map surface features below it.

MiMi Sung, Ingenuity's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in the news release they have seen the camera's algorithm run over such a long stretch for the first time.

NASA's tiny helicopter is currently conducting a 30-Martian-day (or 31-Earth-day) technology demonstration to test rotorcraft flight in the thin atmosphere of Mars. Under the time frame, it will attempt up to five test flights. The space agency said the Ingenuity team is preparing the helicopter's fourth flight, which will take place in a few days.

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