The 50th flight was made to reach Airfield Mu, a flight of 322 meters at a speed of 4.6 meters per second, 18 meters above the Martian soil on April 13.
It took a total of 145.7 seconds.
NASA’s analysis of records from the flight log Ingenuity includes:
In a blog post celebrating the 50th flight, Ingenuity team leader Teddy Tzanetos said, “When we first flew, we thought we would be incredibly lucky to have made five flights. We exceeded our expected cumulative flight time since our technology demonstration was completed by 1,250 percent and the expected distance by 2,214 percent.” said.
The Ingenuity team is now planning flight 51 to bring the helicopter closer to the “Fall River Pass” area of Jezero Crater.
Future flights will head towards “Mount Julian”, where the helicopter will take a panoramic view of Belva Crater, an 800-metre recess on the Martian surface.
NASA suggests that helicopters will frequently accompany future planetary probes.
The agency plans to launch another ‘copter’ called ‘Dragonfly’, which is expected to reach Saturn’s moon Titan in 2034, after leaving Earth in 2026.
