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NASA recently fabricated history when the Ingenuity helicopter lifted off from Wright Brothers Field. Despite the placid name, Wright Brothers Field is on another planet. That'southward where Ingenuity is currently stationed and where it completed its third test flying over the weekend. This was the first test to feature significant side-to-side movement, which has helped to validate the drone'southward democratic flying software. Plus, NASA has received some of the starting time color photos from the aircraft.

Ingenuity arrived on Mars several months ago with the Perseverance rover, but information technology only took flight on April 19th. Since then, NASA has completed three flights, with the latest one being past far the most impressive. The first flying was straight up and down, but the second included a little side-to-side movement. The latest, though, took a big step for Martian flying.

On April 25th, Ingenuity spun up its rotors and rose to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters). After that, information technology flew downrange 164 feet (l meters), which is about half of a football field. Then it headed back and landed safely in Wright Brothers Field. The drone reached a maximum speed of half-dozen.6 feet per second (2 meters per second or 4.47 miles per hr).

A new color image captured by Ingenuity on its third test flight.

Getting Ingenuity moving laterally is an important step as information technology allows NASA to gauge how well the robot'southward flying algorithm can track surface features. This is a vital feature of Ingenuity and any time to come flying Mars explorers. The planet is too far away to control robots in existent-time. With rovers, NASA tin can transmit precise instructions to be carried out, but flight is more complicated. The robot needs to exist able to identify potential hazards on the surface before information technology can touch down — if it moves besides fast, the algorithm might not be able to keep up. This is one of the aspects of the mission NASA could not test alee of time in a tiny World-based vacuum sleeping accommodation.

Later on setting down subsequently the successful third flying, NASA began trickling information back to Earth. Ingenuity uses the Perseverance rover as a relay to communicate with Globe, as it's designed to be small and light, relying on more fragile off-the-shelf hardware than the rover. This data includes some of the showtime color images captured by the helicopter. The Perseverance rover also captured a nifty video of the test (above) showing Ingenuity flying out of frame before returning for landing.

NASA hopes to conduct many more than flights with Ingenuity, gathering even more data on how it behaves on Mars. This experience will help engineers dream upward flying explorers that are could carry of import scientific instruments in hereafter Mars missions.

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