Ingenuity

On April 19, 2021, the Ingenuity helicopter earned the title of the first powered flight on another planet. Nearly two years later, the helicopter has completed its 50th flight on Mars. Was this longevity expected?

NASA and the European Space Agency are on track to bring the first-ever Mars soil and atmosphere samples back to Earth. Today both space agencies shared an update on exactly how they plan to do that thanks to the Mars helicopter Ingenuity.

It’s that time of year again (I feel like it is always that time of year) when drafts of NASA’s next fiscal year budget start to form. During this process, we gain insight into how Congress wants that money spent, which could include changes to existing programs. For example, this year, it looks like Congress was so impressed with Ingenuity’s success that it wants more helicopters (air spacecraft?) for NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission.

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has been hunkering down to hopefully survive the cold Martian winter and to do so it made flight 29 to get closer to the Perseverance rover. This flight follows NASA’s need to push a fix to recover capabilities lost when a critical sensor died.

NASA is having Ingenuity prepare itself for winter on Mars as the little helicopter is slowly not retaining enough power to last the night. So for now, regular flight operations will cease until possibly mid-October.

How on Earth (err.. Mars?) has it been a full year since NASA’s latest Mars rover landed on the surface of Mars!

The rover launched back on July 30, 2020 on an Atlas V 541 rocket and traveled for over 200 days before landing on the surface of the Red Planet.

A press release from China’s National Space Science Center provided a first look at a prototype for their new Martian Helicopter.

Ingenuity recently completed its 13th flight on Mars. Mars helicopter campaign extended from the initially planned 5 flights and is now serving as a valuable tool to assist with route planning for the Perseverance rover.

The Mars 2020 mission consisted of two main payloads, the Perseverance rover and a technology demonstration helicopter called Ingenuity. Perseverance was the 6th rover ever sent to the Martian surface and was based on the successful design of the 2011 Curiosity rover. On this day, Mars 2020 launched to space.

Since we last covered Ingenuity, shortly after its sixth flight, it has been hard at work exploring the Martian surface. Ingenuity has certainly proved useful to Martian exploration, making these flights look routine.

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity was originally expected to complete its campaign after just five flights. After extraordinary performance on in the initial flights, demonstrating the possibility of powered flight on Mars, NASA JPL decided to extend the campaign to gather more information.

We’ve been deep diving through Perseverance and Ingenuity since before the Mars 2020 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral last year. Still, seeing NASA’s Mars rover and first-ever helicopter and their first month spent on the red planet still wows us.

Earlier this morning Ingenuity took off for the fourth and most daring flight of its campaign. It took several hours for flight data to be received by the JPL team but all signs look that it was a successful flight.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has wowed us from Earth with its first flights over the Red Planet. After just 3 flights the tech demo has completed all of its test objectives and will now push the envelope for what it can do.

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity completed its third flight on Sunday. Images and video have been arriving back on Earth since then, and on Tuesday a notable image arrived.

After the success of its first flight at the beginning of this week, Ingenuity took its second flight early this morning. This flight pushed the tech demo to do more challenging tasks as they step through their testing campaign this month.

Tomorrow, April 22nd, Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will be making its second flight.

Early Monday morning NASA’s Ingenuity took its first flight into the Martian atmosphere. This marks the first powered flight on another planet 118 years after the Wright brothers took their first flight here on Earth. You can celebrate the occasion by building your own Ingenuity out of LEGOs!

After the announcement of the first successful flight of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter people have taken to social media to share their excitement, including companies and celebrities.