NASA Ingenuity completes the 64th mission to Mars, and exploration continues

As we wrote in the past, NASA’s drone ingenuity The frequency of its flights increased after the period between March and August of this year, which witnessed a decrease in the number of flights due to various problems. After carrying out four flights in September October The same number of activities have been booked. Since the beginning of operations on MarsIn April 2021, five flights were carried out in February 2023 alone.

After the sixty-first flight that took place on October 5, the sixty-second flight that took place on October 12, and the sixty-third flight that took place on October 19, Flight No. 64 (last so far) completed on October 27th. This made it possible to reposition Mars drone In a new area while the NASA Perseverance rover remains about 800 meters away while exploring an area that is particularly interesting from a geological point of view (and aims to collect new rock samples for the Mars Sample Return mission). This is what we know.

NASA Ingenuity drone and 64th mission to Mars

second What has been reported In the Trip logduring the Flight No. 64 The displacement was horizontal 411 metres With a maximum stake 12 metres At a maximum speed of 5.8 m/s for a total time of 139.1″. In general, the values ​​are lower than those of the previous flight where a distance of 579 meters was reached, and were only surpassed in the 25th flight on 8 April 2022 and the 9th flight on 5 July 2021. In In the first case, the displacement was 704 metres, and in the second case, it was 625 metres. The flight time since April 2021 was 117.6 minutes, and a distance of 14.9 kilometers was reached.

Also the maximum stake selected for Flight No. 64 to NASA ingenuity It is conservative and lower than it used to be (the current record is 24 metres). Thanks to communication with Perseverance and the Deep Space Network, many photographs taken by the low-resolution black-and-white camera (Navcam) and the high-resolution color camera derived from it have been downloaded. consumer (Back to Earth, RTE).

You can see different types of panoramas with a terrain rich in rocks and interspersed with some fine sand dunes but also sand with larger components. This diversity will be useful for understanding soil composition thanks to analyses Rover Perseverance As we continue to move toward the upper region of the river delta (now dry) that once filled Jezero Crater, the spacecraft’s landing site. Mars 2020 mission.