FLORIDA – The United States space agency’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has now made its third successful flight on the Red Planet.
On Sunday, the little chopper rose to a height of five meters (m) before speeding off laterally for 50m – half the length of a football field. Ingenuity then came back to its take-off spot, for a total flight time of 80 seconds.
Sunday’s sortie was the most ambitious yet, but engineers said they plan to push the technology harder still.
They wanted to find the chopper’s limits, even if that means crashing it in the process.
Ingenuity was carried to Mars by the Perseverance rover, which touched down in Jezero Crater in mid-February.(BBC)
