[infurl]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-04-19/nasa-ingenuity-helicopter-makes-historic-first-flight-on-mars/100056708

I've been hanging out for this great news all day.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter may only have been in the air for less than a minute, but it has gone down in history as the first aircraft to achieve powered flight on Mars.

...video footage from the Perseverance rover, captured from its vantage point 65 metres away, showed the successful flight, which reached a height of approximately three metres

[LOCKSUIT]

https://ibb.co/qgW90q4

Oddly, this reminds me of something... A game where little aliens live in flying onions...on a distant rural planet

https://www.google.com/search?q=pikmin+onion&sxsrf=ALeKk00bd6BU2Qw6nNs86htLl081CVYPmA:1618851813133&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu0Y_65IrwAhUECawKHeeZA9oQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1280&bih=923#imgrc=-3oIUbNDKjNrWM

You can see those onions take off in the middle of this video, spectacularly:

[infurl]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-26/nasa-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-makes-third-successful-flight/100094798

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has set new records, flying faster and further on its third flight than in any tests it went through on Earth.

The helicopter took off at 3:31pm AEST on Sunday and rose five metres off the planet's surface before flying 50 metres and reaching a top speed of two metres per second.

[ivan.moony]

I really like those news, but... they are overdoing that PR thing for my taste. They put the news "in two weeks it will fly for the first time on Mars". Then the same news in a week. Then in three days. Then in a day. Then the chopter finally flew, and off we go, another flight is expected in a week, and we wait for more... Just do all the magic at once, why do we have to wait for it? They learnt that trick from product commercial practice, and I don't like that junction between advertisement and science they are making. It all looks more like a reality show than a serious Mars testing.

[infurl]

You really have no idea about how much work they have to do between tests do you. It takes an enormous amount of time to retrieve and evaluate all that data and given what's at stake they cannot afford to make a mistake. One screw up and 80 million dollars worth of Mars drone is gone forever.

[ivan.moony]

Some facts about Mars 2020 mission

I got these info on a quick search over the web. I find it interesting, so I share it here.

Mars mission objective:

The rover's primary objective is to search for signs of past life and gather rock samples for return to Earth by future spacecraft in development by NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA says it spent more than $2.4 billion to design, build and prepare the Mars 2020 mission for launch.

Mars mission strategy:

The Mars Science Laboratory is studying carbon and water cycles on the planet through its history. That is, it seeks to determine in what form and amount carbon and water is stored on the planet or in its atmosphere and how that may have changed through time.

Mars mission communication delay:

Mars is so far away in fact that it takes radio signals quite a long time to get from the spacecraft back to Earth. During Curiosity EDL, this delay will be 13 minutes, 48 seconds, about mid-way between the minimum delay of around 4 minutes and the maximum of around 24 minutes.

Mars mission communication bandwidth:

The present communication rates of Martian orbiters is 2 MBps down to Mars and 2 MBps towards Earth. Mars reconnaissance orbiter does have the capacity to reach 6 MBps, with as little as 35 Watts of power.