Nasa’s Ingenuity helicopter managed to land safely on the Martian surface after a navigation timing error sent it on a wild sixth flight. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration shared a sequence of images, taken by the navigation camera aboard the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, that depicted the last 29 seconds of the rotorcraft’s sixth flight. Håvard Grip, the chief pilot of Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL, later explained the in-flight anomaly. This image of Mars was taken from the height of 33 feet (10 meters) by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter during its sixth flight on May 22, 2021. In order to maintain better accuracy, Ingenuity’s downward-looking navigation camera takes 30 pictures a second of the Martian surface and immediately feeds them into the helicopter’s navigation system.

Source: Hindustan Times May 28, 2021 13:00 UTC