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Washington (AP) - After its fifth flight, the Mars helicopter “Ingenuity” landed back on the planet around 130 meters further south as planned.
During this take-off, the mini helicopter reached a record altitude of around ten meters, NASA announced on Friday (local time). At the new location, “Ingenuity” (in German, for example: ingenuity) will perform new tasks over the next few weeks, such as providing aerial impressions of areas into which a rover cannot penetrate, or taking three-dimensional images from heights in the atmosphere. Nasa announced that these findings would be helpful for future exploration of Mars and other space objects from the air.
Nasa had also released the first audio recording of a flight of the Mars helicopter on Friday.
The rover "Perseverance", with which the mini helicopter landed on Mars in February, recorded the sounds with one of its microphones on the fourth flight of "Ingenuity" at the end of April, it said.
It is the first audio recording from a Mars flight and the first that a spacecraft made on another planet from another spacecraft.
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The helicopter cannot be heard particularly well, however, as “Perseverance” recorded from around 80 meters away and the thin Martian atmosphere and the wind also dampened and drowned out the aircraft noise.
But even the little that can be heard is a “very good surprise” and a “gold mine for further understanding of the Martian atmosphere,” scientist David Mimoun had said.
“Ingenuity” took off for the first time on April 19, making it the first aircraft to fly on another planet.
The mini-helicopter was put on board the NASA rover “Perseverance” (in German roughly: stamina) at the end of February - after 203 days of flight and 472 million kilometers traveled - with a risky maneuver in a dry Martian lake called “Jezero Crater”.
Development and construction of the approximately 2.5 billion dollar (about 2.2 billion euros) rover had taken eight years.
He is supposed to search for traces of previous microbial life on Mars and to research the climate and geology of the planet.
On April 30, the US space agency announced that “Ingenuity” would stay on Mars much longer than previously planned.
The mission, originally planned for around 30 days, was initially extended by 30 days.
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Nasa for the fifth flight
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