Ingenuity helicopter makes first level flight on Mars

The world's first aircraft on Mars, Ingenuity, made its first level flight. So the rotorcraft at 13:33 Moscow time on April 22, 2021 took off and flew 51.9 seconds before landing safely back on the surface that had already been dubbed "the field of the Wright brothers."

Series of tests and the first level flight

This is the second time that Ingenuity has taken off. The first took place on April 19. The flight also took place in a fully autonomous mode, and during it the Perseverance rover transmitted telemetry data to the Mission Control Center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

So, during the second test flight, Ingenuity took off to a height of five meters, and then, changing the angle of inclination of the rotor, provided lateral thrust and moved the apparatus 2 meters in the horizontal plane. Then the device hovered in place and turned in different directions, and after that it returned to the starting point, where it made a successful soft landing.

NASA engineers are fully satisfied with the second test flight. After all, the analysis of telemetry data showed that all previous computer models were accurate. And scientists are enthusiastic and ready for new challenges and tests in which they still have a lot to learn.

You can watch the next flight of Ingenuity in the video below.

The success of Ingenuity is extremely important for scientists, since no one has even tried to create even so more use aircraft on other planets and a lot from the success of the current mission depends.

After all, if everything goes smoothly, then Ingenuity will be the starting point for the development of even more advanced and sophisticated aircraft intended for flights on other planets.

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