Ingenuity’s third test flight success: NASA

NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity’s third test flight also succeeded setting a record on Sunday, 25 April, 2021, by flying faster and further than any tests it went through previously even on earth.

While undertaking  the third test flight, the helicopter took off at 12:33 pm local Mars time, rising 16 feet above the ground.
Then it had zipped downrange 164 feet, almost half the length of a football field, reaching a top speed of 6.6 feet per second.

NASA’s officials said that the flight was what they had planned for. With this third test flight’s success in the history books, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter team is looking ahead to planning its fourth flight in a few days’ time.

Earlier to this, Ingenuity had successfully completed its 1st and 2nd test flights. The experimental flights had taken place at the Jezero crater in Mars.

The space agency had also compared the first test flight of the miniature helicopter with the first flight of airplanes by Wright brothers in 1903.
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages this technology demonstration project for NASA Headquarters.

NASA says the success of Ingenuity’s test flights on the Martian sky will enable scientists to search signs of life on Mars.