NASA ’s inventiveness now really means business . Its fifth scheduled flight was due to be its last , a one - elbow room stumble to a terminal resting place . But the small chopper has worked so well that NASA has promoted Ingenuity to theoperational partnerof Perseverance , and will help the rover for as long as it can .
Duringflight four , Ingenuity roll up lots of range of a function and was able-bodied to map the area if fly over . This allowed the squad to pick a new airfield for the rotocraft . On flight five , Ingenuity flew 129 meters ( 423 groundwork ) in the south from the Wright Brothers Airfield , its base of operation for the last month . It took 108 secondment to get to the new location and before set down , it flew to an altitude of 10 meters ( 33 feet ) to becharm more images of the area . This is a new altitude record for the vehicle , and a game - changer and in how we can view inaccessible parts of the Red Planet from the sky .
“ We bid adieu to our first Martian family , Wright Brothers Field , with grateful thanks for the bread and butter it provided to thehistoric first flightsof a planetary rotorcraft , ” Bob Balaram , primary engineer for Ingenuity at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory , order in astatement . “ No matter where we go from here , we will always gestate with us a reminder of how much those two bicycle builder from Dayton intend to us during our pursuit of the first flight on another world . ”
The focussing for the Perseverance mission squad for the last calendar month of operation has been on inventiveness . It evidence that we canfly a vehicle on another worldin the Solar System . persistence even captured thesound of Ingenuity flying on Mars . Now Perseverance ’s scientific discipline mission is back to being the precedency . Ingenuity is there to assist with the scouting of interesting locations , observations of area not accessible to the rover , and aerial mental imagery .
It is unreadable how longsighted ingeniousness will pull round . It was not designed to last longer than its 30 - day test flight missionary work so any flight , figure , and observance it carry out from now on is a incentive .
