Space - Ingenuity fløy igjen - VG / Curt Lewis

 

NASAS MARS-HELIKOPTER MED NOK EN VELLYKKET FLYGNING

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS via AP

Nasas helikopterdrone Ingenuity har gjennomført en tredje flygning, den så langt lengste og raskeste.

Etter to turer der helikopteret har fløyet mindre turer på planetens overflate, dekket det på den tredje turen en distanse på 50 meter. Helikopteret kom også opp i en hastighet på to meter i sekundet.

– Dagens flygning gikk som planlagt, og det var intet annet enn utrolig, sier Dave Lavery, sjefen for Ingenuity-prosjektet.

Droneflygingen på den røde planeten er det første prosjektet i sitt slag. Ingenuity fløy for første gang mandag. Norske Håvard Fjær Grip, som jobber ved Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory og California Institute of Technology i Pasadena, er en sentral figur i prosjektet. (NTB)

(Photo: NASA/JPL)               NASA's Mars helicopter's third flight goes farther, faster than before NASA's mini helicopter Ingenuity on Sunday successfully completed its third flight on Mars, moving farther and faster than ever before, with a peak speed of 6.6 feet per second. After two initial flights during which the craft hovered above the Red Planet's surface, the helicopter on this third flight covered 64 feet (50 meters) of distance, reaching the speed of 6.6 feet per second (two meters per second), or four miles per hour in this latest flight. "Today's flight as what we planned for, and yet it was nothing short of amazing," said Dave Lavery, the Ingenuity project's program executive. The Perseverance rover, which carried the four-pound (1.8 kilograms) rotorcraft to Mars, filmed the 80-second third flight. NASA said Sunday that video clips would be sent to Earth in the coming days. The lateral flight was a test for the helicopter's autonomous navigation system, which completes the route according to information received beforehand. "If Ingenuity flies too fast, the flight algorithm can't track surface features," NASA explained in a statement about the flight. Ingenuity's flights are challenging because of conditions vastly different from Earth's -- foremost among them a rarefied atmosphere that has less than one percent the density of our own. This means that Ingenuity's rotors, which span four feet, have to spin at 2,400 revolutions per minute to achieve lift -- about five times more than a helicopter on Earth. NASA announced it is now preparing for a fourth flight. Each flight is planned to be of increasing difficulty in order to push Ingenuity to its limits. The Ingenuity experiment will end in one month in order to let Perseverance return to its main task: searching for signs of past microbial life on Mars. https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasas-mars-helicopters-third-flight-180052312.html