After waiting for a dust storm on Mars to pass, NASA's Ingenuity chopper took to the air again and successfully completed Flight 19 on the Red Planet.
Mission team members said Ingenuity flew out of a problematic region of Jezero's floor known as South Sétah, over a ridge, and onto a plateau on Tuesday.
JPL officials stated on Twitter on Tuesday that Ingenuity hung aloft for 99.98 seconds and traversed around 62 meters (205 feet) during the mission.
After some dusty weather delays, it’s time to celebrate the #MarsHelicopter’s first flight of 2022! The rotorcraft flew for the 19th time on the Red Planet, soaring for 99.98 seconds over ~62 meters. pic.twitter.com/akSWkbPuST
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) February 8, 2022
Ingenuity Helicopter Successfully Completes 19th Flight
According to Space.com, the flight was supposed to take place on January 5. However, a massive dust storm erupted near the Jezero Crater on New Year's Day. That region is where Ingenuity and its robotic companion, NASA's Perseverance rover, have been investigating since Feb. 2021.
The Ingenuity crew chose to take a break until the dust storm subsided, making Ingenuity the first spacecraft to be delayed by bad weather on another planet.
The choice to postpone was influenced by two major causes. For starters, because Ingenuity is solar-powered, a lot of dust in the air might prevent it from charging its batteries. Second, dust in the air absorbs solar energy and warms the surrounding atmosphere, significantly thinning it down. That may not seem like a huge problem, but Mars' air is just 1% as dense as Earth's at sea level, making flight there difficult even in ideal conditions.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this shot as it hovered over the Martian surface on April 19, 2021, during the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground during flight.
The mission team members said the decision to delay was the right one. The dust storm did indeed wash across Jezero Crater, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Perseverance's weather station, and Ingenuity's sensors all saw the consequences.
"Most notable was a sharp drop in air density - about a 7% deviation below what was observed pre-dust storm," Jonathan Bapst and Michael Mischna, of Ingenuity's weather and environment team, wrote in an update.
Bapst and Mischna, both of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, argued that a drop would have reduced density below the lower threshold of safe flight, putting the mission in danger.
Mars Atmosphere a Factor in Flights
Each planet's environment will always be different from the previous, which is why creating a drone-like Ingenuity is an incredible feat of engineering in and of itself.
The fact that the Red Planet's atmosphere is so thin compared to Earth's is probably the most important factor here. Space.com said Mars' atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth's and is 95 percent carbon dioxide. If you try to fly a Chinook chopper there, it will barely get off the ground.
To create lift in such a thin environment, the blades of a helicopter or drone must spin much faster than they do on Earth. According to TheNextWeb, flying a helicopter or drone on Mars would be equivalent to flying a helicopter at 100,000 feet above the ground on Earth-an inconceivable achievement given that the highest a helicopter has ever flown here is only 42,000 feet.
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