After 6 months on Mars, NASA's tiny copter is still flying highNASA's Ingenuity helicopter, photographed on the surface of Mars by the Perseverance rover on June 15, 2021. And yet NASA's helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, has completed 12 flights and it isn't ready to retire. The tiny helicopter has become the regular travel companion of the rover Perseverance, whose core mission is to seek signs of ancient life on Mars. By way of comparison, flying a helicopter on Mars would be like flying one in the thin air nearly 30km above Earth. Since then, Ingenuity has flown as high as 12 metres, and its last flight lasted two minutes and 49 seconds.

Source: Bangkok Post September 05, 2021 01:52 UTC