Mars 2020

In an exciting new discovery, NASA’s Perseverance rover has found what appears to be the remains of an ancient riverbed on Mars. Based on evidence seen in the new images, the river could be the deepest and fastest-flowing scientists have seen yet, claims NASA.

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 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.

The Perseverance Rover has collected two samples so far on the Mars, and NASA says they reveal the presence of both ancient water and salt in Jezero Crater

The Perseverance rover obtained its first rock sample on Mars. NASA plans to return this rock-core, along with future samples back to Earth on future Mars missions.

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.

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.

On a livestream from mission control early this morning, the Ingenuity team received the very first data confirming the successful flight of Mars Helicopter Ingenuity.

After delays in the first flight of Ingenuity due to a failure to complete the first high-speed spin test, Ingenuity may be back on track. NASA shared today that Ingenuity has successfully completed a high-speed spin test; an important test before the first flight.

[Update Below] On April 10th, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shared in a Status Update that the first flight of Mars Helicopter Ingenuity has been rescheduled to No Earlier Than April 14th. Ingenuity underwent a low-speed spin test of its rotor yesterday, reaching 50rpm. When the helicopter moved to begin the full-speed spin test of its rotors the watchdog timer expired.

We have been following the deployment of Ingenuity since it first landed on Mars, on the belly of Perseverance, back in February. NASA has been working towards the first flight of Ingenuity, which is scheduled to occur late on April 11th.