Marshal helicopter completes hardest and longest flight yet

NASA’s Marsh Helicopter Ingenuity has successfully completed its ninth flight. It was the longest and riskiest flight yet, as the helicopter flew over inhospitable terrain, making navigation difficult.

The flight lasted a total of 166.4 seconds and Ingenuity reached a speed of 5 meters per second, writes NASA. During the flight, a distance of 625 meters was covered. The longest flight before that lasted 139.9 seconds and the highest speed to date was 4m/s.

Last week, NASA wrote extensively about the planning the ninth flight from Marshal Helicopter Ingenuity. The small helicopter navigates using a camera at the bottom. The terrain recognition algorithms are unable to see slopes and interpret everything as flat terrain.

Ingenuity © NASA/JPL-Caltech

The ninth flight took place in the Séitah area, where there are many relatively steep slopes. This could cause deviations of meters during navigation and could also cause problems during landing. By flying slowly over certain areas, NASA wanted to limit those risks.

NASA chose a flat landing area with a radius of 50 meters, but due to the possible deviations, according to the space agency, there was a chance that Ingenuity would end up outside it. That would also jeopardize communication between Mars rover Perseverence and the helicopter, which relies on a line-of-sight connection.

According to NASA, the high risk of the flight suited Ingenuity’s purpose. The small helicopter was taken to Mars as an experiment and demonstrated with this flight that such an air vehicle can reach places that are impassable for a Mars rover. The flight also provides close-up shots of the Séitah terrain that could not have been obtained otherwise.