The small chopper surpassed the 1-mile (1.6 km) mark of its total flight distance on Saturday (July 24) when soared over a rocky region called

NASA's Mars helicopter soars past 1-mile mark in 10th flight over Red Planet

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2021-07-25 17:30:05

The small chopper surpassed the 1-mile (1.6 km) mark of its total flight distance on Saturday (July 24) when soared over a rocky region called "Raised Ridges" at its Jezero Crater home. The sortie was the 10th and highest trip yet for Ingenuity, which arrived on Mars with NASA's Perseverance rover in February. Ingenuity's first flight occurred in April.

"With the Mars Helicopter's flight success today, we crossed its 1-mile total distance flown to date," officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California wrote in an Instagram update late Saturday. JPL is home to the mission control for Perseverance and Ingenuity.

Flight 10 was the most challenging yet for Ingenuity, with 10 different waypoints for the helicopter to hit as it flew over its "Raised Ridges" target. It reached a maximum altitude of 40 feet (12 meters), a new record height, and flew about 310 feet (95 m). From take off to landing, the entire flight lasted 165.4 seconds. That's just under 3 minutes.

During the flight, Ingenuity was expected to snap a series of images, including ones that could help scientists create stereo images of the Raised Ridges rocks. The ridges are an area mission scientists are considering to send the Perseverance rover.