NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter tailoring up for longest flight ever this weekend

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is poised to set yet another record this weekend.

The 4-pound (1.8 kgs) Ingenuity, the veryfirst robotic ever to checkout the skies of a world beyond Earth, is setup to make its 68th Red Planet flight on Saturday (Dec. 9).

The strategy calls for Ingenuity to cover 2,717 feet (828 meters) of Mars ground — more than half a mile — throughout the sortie, objective group members composed in a sneakpeek today (Dec. 8). That’s significantly further than the helicopter’s existing range record of 2,310 feet (704 m), which was set in April 2022, on its 25th flight.

Related: Mars helicopter Ingenuity phones home, breaking 63-day silence

Ingenuity landed on the flooring of Mars’ Jezero Crater with NASA’s Perseverance rover in February 2021, charged with revealing that aerial expedition is possible on Mars regardlessof the world’s thin environment. 

The little rotorcraft did simply that over the course of 5 flights throughout the spring of 2021, then was approved an extended objective that continues to this day. Ingenuity is now serving as a scout for Perseverance, which is searching for indications of ancient Mars life and gathering samples for future return to Earth.

Saturday’s prepared flight will target a leading speed of 22.4 milesperhour (36 kph), objective group members composed in the sneakpeek. That would tie Ingenuity’s speed record, which was set this past October. The coming hop will last 147 seconds and take the chopper a optimum of 33 feet (10 m) above Mars’ red dirt.

Those latter 2 figures won’t set any brand-new marks; Ingenuity has skyrocketed as high as 79 feet (24 m) and remained up for 169.5 seconds at a time, according to the objective’s flight log. 

Over the course of its 67 Mars flights, Ingenuity hasactually racked up a overall of 121 minutes of air time and covered about 9.5 miles (15.3 kilometers) of ground.