It’s the same on Mars as it is here — just when you’re getting used to your job, the bosses go and change things up.
At least that’s our read on the situation at Jezero crater, where the Mars Ingenuity helicopter has just had its mission upgraded and extended. In a Friday morning press conference, the Ingenuity flight team, joined by members of the Perseverance team and some NASA brass, made the announcement that Ingenuity had earned an extra 30 sols of flight time, and would be transitioned from a mere “technology demonstrator” to an “operations demonstration” phase. They also announced Ingenuity’s fourth flight, which concluded successfully today, covering 266 meters and staying airborne for 117 seconds.
Fourth flight of Ingenuity (circled), captured by Perseverance rover. Source: NASA/JPL
There are two main drivers of the mission extension. The first is that Ingenuity has achieved all of the technical goals set out for it in terms of proving that a helicopter can fly in the Martian atmosphere and operate autonomously. In doing this, Ingenuity has gathered a large data set that will inform the design of future UAVs for planetary exploration. But that alone would not have been enough to justify the mission extension. Ingenuity was always an add-on, designed to take up as few resources as possible from the primary mission of Perseverance, which is to gather samples in the search for ancient life on Mars. The plan was for the rover to stay near Ingenuity to support flight operations for 30 sols, then head out to the more interesting areas ..
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