The space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which oversees the current mission to Mars, shared news of Ingenuity’s return to the Martian skies on Twitter, revealing that the flight included a “short hop” to enable the team to test that it is still working normally and removing the dust from its solar panel. “The Mars copter is back in flight!” JPL said in a tweet. “After a two-month break, the rotor made a short hop over the weekend so the team could check its vitals and dust off the solar panel.” The #MarsHelicopter is back in flight! After a two-month hiatus, the rotor made a short jump over the weekend so the team could check its vitals and dust off the solar panel. Learn more about why the team wanted a simple flight 30: pic.twitter.com/bnCUG794Ks — NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) August 22, 2022 Saturday’s liftoff marked Ingenuity’s 30th flight and came 16 months after its historic maiden flight, when it became the first aircraft to achieve controlled, powered flight on a planet other than Earth. The helicopter’s downtime was caused by the harsh winter conditions that enveloped the Jezero Crater where the flying machine is located. The freezing temperatures were simply too cold for the helicopter to operate safely, and the reduced amount of sunlight landing on its solar panel prevented the helicopter from maintaining sufficient charge both day and night. The conditions left the Ingenuity rooted to the spot after its last aerial adventure on June 11. After a few short ground tests on August 6 and 15, the JPL team confirmed that Ingenuity was good to go on its first flight in more than two months. According to a plan released before Saturday’s launch, the flight involved Ingenuity climbing to a maximum height of 16.5 feet (5 meters), flying sideways about 6.5 feet (2 meters), then descending back to land . The flight was expected to last around 33 seconds, although this has yet to be confirmed. “We plan to continue our course toward the river delta in the coming weeks while the environment (and thus the daily recoverable battery charge) continues to improve,” JPL said in a recent blog post. “With higher battery states of charge, longer flights will follow, and eventually Ingenuity will be able to power its internal heaters during the night, which will prevent its electronics from freezing in the Martian cold every night.” He added that next month he will upload a software upgrade to the Ingenuity that will give it new navigation capabilities for more efficient flights in the difficult terrain of the river delta. After a successful series of flight tests last year, Ingenuity began assisting NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover as the ground vehicle seeks to collect samples of Martian soil with the goal of helping scientists determine whether life of any kind ever existed on the red planet. The helicopter helped map the Martian terrain to find the best paths for Perseverance and image areas of interest to see if it’s worth sending Perseverance up for a closer look. The ingenuity has proven so successful that NASA plans to develop more advanced versions of the flying mission in future space missions.
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