NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter simply made its sixty fifth and 66th Purple Planet flights, two brief hops that helped prep the chopper for a coming stretch through which it is going to be bring to a halt from floor keep an eye on.Flight 65 came about on Nov. 2. The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity stayed aloft that day for 48 seconds, protecting 23 toes (7 meters) of Mars floor within the procedure. Then, the rotorcraft was once at it once more on Nov. 3 with a good briefer sortie: It lasted 23 seconds and concerned a horizontal motion of simply 2 toes (0.6 m), in keeping with the project’s flight log. Not anything went improper on both flight; they were not designed to bite up giant chunks of Martian terrain.”Those two brief flights situated the #MarsHelicopter for the impending Mars sun conjunction, when project groups will pause on sending instructions for approximately 2 weeks,” officers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity’s project, mentioned nowadays (Nov. 7) in a submit on X (previously referred to as Twitter).Comparable: Mars helicopter Ingenuity telephones house, breaking 63-day silenceNASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter got this symbol the usage of its high-resolution colour digicam on its 66th Purple Planet flight, which came about on Nov. 3, 2023. (Symbol credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Earth and the Purple Planet take a seat on reverse facets of the solar throughout Mars sun conjunction, which occurs as soon as each two years or so. Importantly for NASA’s Martian explorers, this positioning manner our big name blocks radio alerts zinging between the 2 planets. Mars project groups subsequently stand down from commanding their robots throughout this time.”It is inconceivable to expect what knowledge could be misplaced because of interference from charged debris from the solar, and that misplaced knowledge may doubtlessly endanger the spacecraft,” NASA officers wrote in a sun conjunction explainer. “As a substitute, previous to sun conjunction, engineers ship two weeks’ price of directions and wait.”As that observe signifies, Mars sun conjunction lasts about two weeks. This newest incidence runs from Nov. 11 to Nov. 25 — the stretch of time throughout which Mars will probably be inside of 2 levels of the solar from Earth’s vantage level, NASA officers mentioned. (For standpoint: Your clenched fist held at arm’s period covers about 10 levels of sky.)Ingenuity landed within Mars’ 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021, in conjunction with NASA’s life-hunting, sample-collecting Perseverance rover.The little chopper’s number one objective was once to turn that powered flight is conceivable on Mars in spite of the planet’s wispy environment, which is solely 1% the density of Earth’s at sea degree.Ingenuity aced that activity over 5 flights within the spring of 2021. NASA then granted the helicopter a longer project, on which Ingenuity is serving as a scout for Perseverance. Over its 66 flights thus far, Ingenuity has flown a complete of 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) and stayed aloft for almost 119 mins, in keeping with the project flight log.
