Page 2 - Spec Tech Vol 1 Issue 04

Ingenuity Mars helicopter notches 33rd Red

Planet flight

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has taken flight
again, staying aloft for nearly a minute this past
weekend on its 33rd extraterrestrial sortie.

Ingenuity, which is a part of NASA's life-
seeking Perseverance rover mission, took to the skies
of Mars on Saturday (Sept. 24), achieving a flight of
just over 55 seconds. The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms)
rotorcraft soared roughly 33 feet (10 meters) in the air
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on the Martian sur- and moved about 365 ft (111 meters) before alighting
face. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

in a new location, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages
the missions of both Ingenuity and Perseverance.

"If you look closely at this image, you’ll see Ingenuity’s
leg and tiny shadow," JPL officials said via Twitter on
Tuesday (Sept. 27). Ingenuity is helping Perseverance
explore Jezero Crater, which hosted a lake and a river
delta in the ancient past. Later in the 2020s, NASA and
the European Space Agency together plan to launch a
sample-return mission to the region, which will use Ingenuity's shadow is visible at the bottom left of this
helicopters much like Ingenuity to pick up samples image during its 33rd flight, on Sept. 24, 2022. (Image
credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
gathered by Perseverance and haul them to a rocket for
a launch back to Earth.
The team has framed the sample-return mission, and
Perseverance's cache of samples, as crucial to help
understand the history of the Red Planet and the
potential for life on Mars.
Perseverance, meanwhile, met some challenges while
trying to perform a rock abrasion earlier in the week.
A blog post on Wednesday (Sept. 28) from JPL said
the rock, nicknamed "Chiniak," completely broke apart
after the Martian surface reacted in an unexpected
way to Perseverance's tools.

"While we had to forgo abrasion proximity science on
(Image credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
this target, we gained information about the
cohesiveness and strength of the rock and had the opportunity to observe and compare both
freshly broken and weathered rock surfaces," Eleanor Moreland, a Ph.D. student at Rice
University, wrote in the post.

"Thanks to the quick work of the science and engineers, a new target was selected for a
successful abrasion just a couple of days later," Moreland added.

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