NASA's Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Set for 7th Red Planet Flight on Sunday
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NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity set for 7th Red Planet flight on Sunday:
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity will take to the air again this weekend, if all goes according to plan.
Ingenuity's handlers are prepping the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper for its seventh Martian flight, which will take place no earlier than Sunday (June 6). The plan is to send Ingenuity to a new airfield, about 350 feet (105 meters) south of its current location on the floor of Jezero Crater.
"This will mark the second time the helicopter will land at an airfield that it did not survey from the air during a previous flight," NASA officials wrote in an update on Friday (June 4). "Instead, the Ingenuity team is relying on imagery collected by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that suggests this new base of operations is relatively flat and has few surface obstructions."
Data from the flight will be beamed home to Earth over the three days following the flight, they added.
Video:See the view on Mars from Ingenuity helicopter's fourth flight
Previously:
Surviving an In-Flight Anomaly: What Happened on Ingenuity's Sixth Flight
Mars Helicopter Suffered Glitch During Flight, Forced Emergency Landing
Mars Helicopter Flight Delayed to No Earlier than April 14
NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Survives First Freezing Night on Mars
NASA's Mars Rover Drops Off Ingenuity Helicopter Ahead of Historic Flight
First Flight on Mars? Ingenuity Helicopter Preps for Takeoff
NASA Lays Out Plans for its First Flights on Mars
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