Mars

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.

Last week NASA announced the Martian InSight lander’s mission would conclude by the end of this year due to low power. One of the first steps to get the lander ready for that will be placing the arm into its final resting position. So today, NASA shared InSight’s final selfie using the arm’s camera.

NASA announced on May 17 that it expects the InSight lander mission to end this year. While it hasn’t gotten as much attention as the Perseverance rover, InSight has made some remarkable discoveries during its lifetime.

You might have forgotten about Mars‘ two little moons. Smaller and not so circular, they aren’t as crazy as those found around Jupiter or Saturn. However, they are still special because we can see them pass in front of the Sun like our own, and through Perseverance, we can see Mars’ solar eclipses with better resolution than ever before.

NASA’s flagship Mars rover Perseverance has been exploring Jezero Crater for over a year now. As it traveled to its newest destination, Perseverance spotted its own parachute that it used to descend towards Mars’ surface safely.

In his latest prediction, SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he expects humans to land on Mars in 2029.

This week, the target launch date for the James Webb Space telescope was announced, SpaceX released a new render of Starship Super Heavy, and Inspiration4 works toward launch.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) sent back nearly 300 new photos of the Red Planet which were released September 1st.

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.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover reached the Red Planet in February, and weeks of never-before-attempted Ingenuity helicopter flights followed. Now Perseverance is ready to knock out a major mission of its own: collect Mars samples.

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.

Perseverance, Ingenuity, and all the other American bots on Mars now have company. China became the second-ever country to successfully land a rover on the red planet today. Zhurong, named for the god of fire in Chinese folk tales, is roughly the size of NASA’s 2004 Spirit and Opportunity robots.

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.

This week’s Saturday Night Live was hosted by none other than SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. This lead to many references to all of Musk’s companies, one of the highlights of the night though was a skit showing off SpaceX’s future base on Mars.

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.