NASA’s Mars helicopter has taken to the skies once more after a prolonged break resulting from bitterly chilly circumstances on the distant planet.

The house company’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is overseeing the present Mars mission, took to Twitter to share information of Ingenuity’s return to the martian skies, revealing that the flight concerned a “short hop” to allow the group to check that it’s nonetheless working OK, and to take away mud from its photo voltaic panel.

“The Mars helicopter is back in flight!” JPL stated within the tweet. “After a two-month hiatus, the rotorcraft did a short hop over the weekend so the team can check its vitals and knock some dust off the solar panel.”

The #MarsHelicopter is again in flight! After a two-month hiatus, the rotorcraft did a brief jump over the weekend so the group can examine its vitals and knock some mud off the photo voltaic panel.

Learn extra about why the group needed a easy Flight 30: https://t.co/02Bn48aQ3Y pic.twitter.com/bnCUG794Ks

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) August 22, 2022

Saturday’s lift-off marked Ingenuity’s thirtieth sortie and got here 16 months after its historic maiden flight when it grew to become the primary plane to attain managed, powered flight on a planet aside from Earth.

The helicopter’s downtime was prompted by the cruel winter circumstances that enveloped Jezero Crater the place the flying machine is positioned. The frigid temperatures had been just too chilly for the helicopter to securely function, and the lowered quantity of daylight touchdown on its photo voltaic panel prevented the helicopter from sustaining an sufficient cost by means of each day and evening. The circumstances left Ingenuity rooted to the spot following its final aerial journey on June 11.

After a few quick ground-based exams on August 6 and 15, the group at JPL confirmed that Ingenuity was good to take its first flight in additional than two months.

According to a plan launched previous to Saturday’s sortie, the flight concerned Ingenuity climbing to a most altitude of 16.5 ft (5 meters), flying sideways about 6.5 ft (2 meters), after which coming again right down to land. The flight was anticipated to final about 33 seconds, although this has but to be confirmed.

“We intend to continue our flight path toward the river delta in the coming weeks while the environment (and thus the daily recoverable battery charge) continues to improve,” JPL stated in a current weblog put up. “With higher battery states of charge will come longer flights, and eventually Ingenuity will be able to power its internal heaters overnight, which will stop its electronics from freezing in the martian cold each evening.”

It added that subsequent month it’s going to add a software program improve to Ingenuity that can give it new navigation capabilities for extra environment friendly flights throughout the difficult river delta terrain.

Following a profitable string of flight exams final 12 months, Ingenuity began helping NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover because the ground-based automobile seeks to assemble martian soil samples geared toward serving to scientists decide if lifetime of any kind ever existed on the purple planet.

The helicopter has helped by mapping the martian terrain to search out the most effective routes for Perseverance to take, and imaging areas of curiosity to see if it’s value sending Perseverance for a more in-depth look.

Ingenuity has proved so profitable that NASA plans to deploy extra superior variations of the flying mission in future house missions.

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