The Ingenuity helicopter successfully completed a second flight on Mars Thursday, and it was even more challenging than the first. Ingenuity autonomously flew for almost 52 seconds this time, climbing 16 feet (4.9 meters) up through the Martian atmosphere. After a brief hover, it tilted at a 5-degree angle and moved sideways for 7 feet (2.1 meters). The helicopter hovered in place again to make several turns. This occurred to allow Ingenuity’s color camera to capture images taken looking in different directions before touching back down in the center of the airfield. Ingenuity only collected black-and-white images with its navigation camera during the first flight.
“It sounds simple, but there are many unknowns regarding how to fly a helicopter on Mars. That’s why we’re here — to make these unknowns known,” said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mars has one-third of the gravity we experience on Earth and the atmosphere is 1% of the density of Earth’s at its surface. This makes controlled flight much more difficult on Mars. Information gathered from these flights will inform future rotorcraft that could explore Mars and other planets.Ingenuity already has sent back a black-and-white image from this second flight, showing the shadow of the helicopter on the Martian surface as the rotorcraft hovered above.
