Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Flies Higher and Longer on Red Planet in 2nd Flight
DannyB writes:
Mars helicopter Ingenuity flies higher and longer on Red Planet in 2nd flight:
NASA's little Ingenuity helicopter took to the skies above Mars' Jezero Crater again early this morning (April 22), just three days after making history with the first powered, controlled flight on a world beyond Earth.
Monday's landmark 39-second debut flight was a straight up-and-down trip that took Ingenuity just 10 feet (3 meters) off Jezero's dusty floor. The helicopter team pushed the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) rotorcraft a little harder during today's 52-second sortie, which lifted off at 5:33 a.m. EDT (0933 GMT).
"Go big or go home! The Mars Helicopter successfully completed its 2nd flight, capturing this image with its black-and-white navigation camera," officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California wrote on Twitter. "It also reached new milestones of a higher altitude, a longer hover and lateral flying."
[...] Today's flight plan called for Ingenuity to climb to 16.5 feet (5 m), hover, tilt slightly and move sideways for 6.5 feet (2 m), Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, wrote in a preflight blog post yesterday (April 21).
"Then Ingenuity will come to a stop, hover in place and make turns to point its color camera in different directions before heading back to the center of the airfield to land," Aung wrote.
See also:
NBC News: NASA's Mars helicopter soars higher, longer on 2nd flight
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