The Ingenuity helicopter has successfully completed a new flight on the surface of Mars.
This is the seventh successful flight of the NASA helicopter, which arrived on the Red Planet in February 2021 with the Perseverance rover, reports
Numerama
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This new flight was carried out this Wednesday.
Ingenuity "flew for 62.8 seconds and traveled about 106m south to a new landing zone," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Twitter.
The machine even managed to take a picture with its navigation camera.
We see the shadow of the helicopter on the surface of Mars, in black and white.
Another successful flight 👏 # MarsHelicopter completed its 7th flight and second within its operations demo phase.
It flew for 62.8 seconds and traveled ~ 106 meters south to a new landing spot.
Ingenuity also took this black-and-white navigation photo during flight.
pic.twitter.com/amluVq9wbb
- NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) June 8, 2021
A trouble-free flight this time
Initially, Ingenuity's role was only to prove that it was possible to fly on Mars.
Faced with the successes encountered during the first flights, scientists from the American space agency decided to go further.
This Wednesday's trip was thus the second operational demonstration flight.
The goal for NASA engineers is to determine how such a flying machine could help researchers in their exploration missions.
This time, the flight went off without a hitch: the last time the small helicopter encountered vibration problems which have since been fixed.
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