The Mars helicopter ‘Ingenuity’ completed its longest flight to date on December 20. During the 135-second flight, he covered a distance of 705 meters and filmed the surface of the Red Planet.
As NASA’s flight log shows, the mini helicopter, which weighs just 1.8 kilograms, also broke its previous speed record of 36 km/h during its 69th flight. Two days later, ‘Ingenuity’ completed another flight, its 70th since arriving on Mars.
According to NASA’s flight log, Ingenuity has traveled a total of about eleven miles (the equivalent of 17.7 kilometers) in its 70 flights on the Red Planet so far.
Rotors spin extremely fast
The helicopter must endure extreme conditions on the Red Planet: At night it is as cold as minus 90 degrees, which could easily be a death sentence for batteries and electronics. Because of its thin atmosphere, which is roughly only one percent as dense as Earth’s, Ingenuity’s rotors must accelerate to 2,537 revolutions per minute – many times more than those of helicopters on Earth, about the frequency of the wing beats of hummingbirds. ‘Ingenuity’ (photo below) obtains the energy for this from its battery, which is powered by solar energy.
‘Ingenuity’ was aboard the ‘Perseverance’ rover, which landed on the Red Planet in February 2021 – after 203 days of flight and 472 million kilometers traveled – in a risky maneuver in a dry Martian lake called Jezero Crater.
Source: Krone
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