NASA’s Creativity Helicopter has set a new record for flying over the surface of Mars.
And while most of Ingenuity’s 35 helicopter flights on the Red Planet have reached a maximum altitude of 33 feet, the weekly flight of a similar device for a drone has surpassed the current record of 39 feet achieved on three separate flights last year.
Digitartlends reports that information reached Mars with NASA’s Perseverance rover on a spectacular descent captured in a popular video in February 2021.
After two months of testing on the ground, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to achieve power flight and take control of another country with the aircraft staying 10 feet off the ground for the 39th time. Its longest flight to date was 2,325 meters on a mission in April 2022.
Although the helicopter was sent to Mars only to test the possibility of using such a machine for future missions on Earth, the intelligence was so successful that NASA began using it to support Earth exploration as it looked for evidence of ancient life on Earth.
The aircraft assists by using a ground-view camera to scan an area of interest for endurance testing.
The space station also allows the team to use the images to determine the safest and most efficient routes for Perseverance to take as they navigate the rocky terrain to the various research sites.
Creativity’s journey came 11 days after the probe set another record, which is the shortest flight in the history of Mars, when it flew 16 feet off the ground for only 18 seconds.
The project gave the team the opportunity to test new skills, in particular, to avoid landing accidents and upgrade digital maps to aid navigation.