Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prints Record Longest Flight Distance

Ingenuity helicopters on Mars (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA The Ingenuity Helicopter belonging to the United States Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) scored a new flight distance on the planet Mars last December. This distance reaches 705 meters.

This record was only discovered after NASA released flight records of Ingenuity based on time, distance, speed, and flight altitude. Of the four flights in December, Ingenuity reached its furthest distance on third flights.

Overall, the record was achieved on the 69th Ingenuity flight. In the flight, the Mars observer helicopter flew 16 meters high for 135.4 seconds. The flight duration is quite short because the speed reaches 22.4 mph.

So far, Ingenuity has flown 70 times with a total distance of 17 kilometers in 127.7 minutes. Although the total altitude has only reached 24 meters, this observer helicopter has reached many records in just two years.

Ingenuity first landed on the Red Planet on April 19, 2021. Initially, the launch of Ingenuity was part of a technology demonstration with a seven-month tenure. The small plane only needed to fly five times.

After going through five flights, Ingenuity is still working well and refusing to retire. Therefore, NASA began to run a new operations demonstration phase experiment by providing a more difficult task, namely exploring Mars.

While exploring Mars, Ingenuity will use the image of the rotor plane to support the exploration of the Jezero Crater, the task of the Perseverance rover. Images captured by Ingenuity will be used to design Perseverance exploration routes.