NASA Summary Draft 2 with Janaish
On February 18, 2021, helicopter Ingenuity, landed on Jezero Crater, Mars, along with rover, Perseverance (Gohd, 2021). Ingenuity is the first aircraft to have flown on Mars. According to Mimi Aung, Ingenuity’s project manager at NASA, Ingenuity had been fully tested on Earth before the Mars mission.
Ingenuity’s
main responsibility was not research, but to test and prove that flight is
possible on Mars. It is a small helicopter equipped with carbon-fiber rotors
that measure 1.2 meters across. Its blades can spin up to 2500 revolutions per
minute. Ingenuity faced several challenges during its mission, such as
attempting flight in Mars' thin atmosphere and dealing with wind and dust
storms as well as getting enough energy for survival.
Ingenuity
succeeded the first three flights, flying to higher altitudes and for longer
durations subsequently. However, on its fourth flight attempt, Ingenuity failed
to shift to "flight mode" due to software issues, which was fixed
with a software rewrite. However, even after the fix, there was still a chance
of a repeat of the incident.
As
the flight mission was going better than expected, Ingenuity had been tasked
with finding new flight locations and taking picture, all without the support
of Perseverance nearby.
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