Ibdaa helicopter took off from the “airport” on Mars for the second time. He climbed higher

The test take-off was scheduled for Thursday from a mock airfield on the surface of the Martian crater Jezero at 11:30 CEST.

As confirmed by the first data sent to Earth that day by the persistent robotic explorer, which delivered a small helicopter the size of a drone to Mars in February, the Ingenuity device flew five meters high, where it remained for a while, Then slash. Horizontal flight of five degrees for a distance of two meters.

According to astronaut and astronomer Michel Vaclavik of the Czech Space Office, the helicopter was to rotate around the longitudinal axis several times and take pictures of the surroundings with a color camera. Finally, he had to return to the takeoff site and land.

According to first reports from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, it all really worked and the entire maneuver took 51.9 seconds. So far, scientists have published a photo taken with a black and white navigation camera on Ingenuity’s “belly”, as well as a screenshot taken by a nearby rover – also in a color copy.

A “jump” occurred on Monday in the Martian atmosphere scattered over the local crater lake at a height of just over three meters, where the creativity stayed for a while, rotated around a vertical axis, then landed again on the surface of Mars, then stopped it. Rotors. In total, she stayed in the air for 39 seconds during the first event, Space.com writes.

“For the third flight, an operating altitude of five meters is again planned, but the horizontal flight will reach a distance of up to 50 meters. Dexterity will also travel at a higher speed,” added Vaclavík.

The helicopter was originally scheduled to take off for the first time at the end of last week, but the scientists encountered a software problem that delayed the launch sequence.

Ingenuity has an extremely lightweight body that weighs 1.8 kg and a pair of carbon vanes that spin against each other. Flying through the very scattered atmosphere of Mars is much more demanding than it is on Earth, so propellers had to develop around 2,400 revolutions per minute, which is many times more than ground-based helicopters.

The helicopter does not carry any scientific instruments, and its mission is to test the capabilities of flights on extraterrestrial objects for possible use in future reconnaissance programs. NASA previously stated that it would consider a potentially successful flight of the machine a milestone that could be compared to the first flight of a heavier-than-air object on our planet, which was demonstrated in 1903 by the Wright brothers.

In addition, the Tenacity Chariot produced oxygen on Mars for the first time this week.

The spacecraft has been able to split the carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere into oxygen and carbon with the help of MOXIE, and according to NASA, this is the first time that something similar has happened on a planet other than Earth.