![]() ![]() Note: Dates based on Pacific time zone at the time of Ingenuity's flight. MiMi Aung, Mars Helicopter Project Manager Taking Flight: How Girls Can Grow Up to be Engineers News Briefing: Preview First Mars Helicopter Flights Mars Helicopter Live Q&A: One Step Closer to First Flight Month of Ingenuity - Helicopter Flight Preview News Briefing: Mars Helicopter Pre-FlightĬhannels that carried the broadcast include:Įxperts Discuss NASA's Mars Helicopter - Talk for Students Samantha Hatch, human resources specialist Nagin Cox, engineering operations deputy team chief ![]() With its tech demo complete, Ingenuity transitions to a new operations demonstration phase to explore how future rovers and aerial explorers can work together. After that, the helicopter successfully performed additional experimental flights of incrementally farther distance and greater altitude. It was a major milestone: the very first powered, controlled flight in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and, in fact, the first such flight in any world beyond Earth. For the first flight on April 19, 2021, Ingenuity took off, climbed to about 10 feet (3 meters) above the ground, hovered in the air briefly, completed a turn, and then landed. The helicopter completed its technology demonstration after three successful flights. Once the rover reached a suitable "airfield" location, it released Ingenuity to the surface so it could perform a series of test flights over a 30-Martian-day experimental window. It hitched a ride to Mars on the Perseverance rover. Only then will scientists be able to say with greater confidence whether they truly found signs of ancient life forms.The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration to test powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time. Eventually, NASA is planning a return mission with the European Space Agency to collect the stored samples and return them for lab analysis on Earth, sometime in the 2030s. Each rock Perseverance analyzes will have an untouched geologic "twin" which the rover will scoop up, seal and store under its belly. Farley said that a small cliff that harbored fine-layered rocks might have been formed from lake muds, and "those are very good places to look for biosignatures," though it will be a few more months before Perseverance reaches that outcrop. One of the instruments, called SuperCam, will fire a laser at the rock and then take readings of the resulting plume. These will be analyzed by Perseverance's turret-mounted scientific instruments to determine chemical and mineral composition, and look for organic matter. The rover will then use an abrasion tool to scrape off the rock's top layer, exposing unweathered surfaces. First, Perseverance will deploy its 7-foot (two-meter) long robotic arm to determine precisely where to take its sample. In addition to filling gaps in scientists' geologic understanding of the region, the rover will also scour for possible signs of ancient microbes. Mars Perseverance Sol 196: Sample Caching System Camera (CacheCam): NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its onboard Sample Caching System Camera (CacheCam), located inside the rover underbelly. Analyzing samples will reveal clues about the rocks' chemical and mineral composition - revealing things like whether they were formed by volcanoes or are sedimentary in origin. The team believes the crater was once home to an ancient lake that filled and drew down multiple times, potentially creating the conditions necessary for life. ![]()
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