First one-way trip to Mars for Ingenuity, the NASA drone-helicopter that demonstrated the possibility of controlled flight on a planet other than Earth.
On its fifth flight, for the first time the vehicle did not return to its starting point, but landed in another place, in the same direction in which the Perseverance rover is going, so that it will be able to reach it and continue to follow it in the next tests.
In the new flight, which lasted 108 seconds, Ingenuity also reached the altitude of 10 meters, thus beating its previous records.
The helicopter drone traveled 129 meters, heading south and leaving behind its old airfield dedicated to the Wright brothers. Once at his destination he reached the altitude of ten meters to capture new images of the Martian soil.
The new location also marks the start of a new phase in testing, during which Ingenuity will have to demonstrate that it is able to perform exploration flights of new areas of the planet, aerial observations of places not accessible to rovers, and to capture stereo images from high altitudes.
Now the drone is resting and recharging its batteries awaiting new instructions from the Perseverance rover, which in turn will receive them from the mission control center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Jpl) in Pasadena (California).
From now on it is planned to fly Ingenuity so as not to interfere with the scientific program of Perseverance. "A couple more flights are planned in the coming weeks and then we will consider how to proceed," said Ingenuity's chief mission engineer Bob Balaram of the JPL. "We have already collected all the flight performance data that we intended to collect. The new phase that opens now - he added - offers us the opportunity to further expand our knowledge".
