NASA Flies Ingenuity for Fifth Time Written 10 May 2021
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this image on its fourth flight, 30 April 2021, using its navigation camera. | Credit: NASA
The New York Times reported that on Friday, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made its fifth flight on Mars, making “a successful one-way trip to another flat patch of Mars more than the length of a football field away. The spot where it landed will serve as its base of operations for the next month at least, beginning a new phase of the mission where it will serve as a scout for its larger robotic companion, the Perseverance rover.” Ingenuity “retraced the course of its previous flight, heading south for 423 feet at an altitude of 16 feet.” Instead “of turning around, it stopped and climbed higher, to 33 feet, to take some pictures of the area. It then set down, 108 seconds after it had taken off.”
Full Story (New York Times)