You Can Watch the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's Longest Flight to Date

pcmag.com:

NASA has shared footage of the Ingenuity helicopter's longest flight on Mars to date.

"The navigation camera aboard the rotorcraft captured its longest and fastest flight to date on the Red Planet," NASA says. "The helicopter covered 2,310 feet (704 meters) at a max speed of 12 mph (5.5 meters per second)" during the course of its record-breaking 25th flight on April 28.

NASA has also shared(Opens in a new window) more information about its plans for Ingenuity during the Martian winter.

"Our latest models suggest that regardless of modifications to our overnight thermostat strategy," the agency says, "it will be extremely challenging or even impossible to keep our electronics core module (ECM) components warm and within their nominal temperatures overnight."

These challenges have already created some problems for NASA. The agency says it lost communications with Ingenuity from May 3-4 because it's getting too cold on Mars.

"Due to the seasonal decrease in available solar energy, increases in airborne dust density, and the drop in temperatures," NASA says, "the energy demand to keep the electronics powered and warm throughout the night has surpassed Ingenuity’s available energy budget."

So the space agency is prioritizing downlink communications—meaning it's focused on "copying flight performance logs, electronics logs, and high-resolution color images from the last eight flights that are still onboard Ingenuity"—to make sure that data isn't lost forever.

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