Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Flies Higher During Second Flight

Mars helicopter Ingenuity begins its second flight on April 22. (NASA)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA flew for a second time the first powered aircraft on Mars Thursday demonstrating that humans can control flight within the planet's ultra thin atmosphere.

The tissue box-size Mars helicopter Ingenuity transmitted a few images during its flight to its host, the Perseverance rover. Located 215 feet away, Perseverance transmitted the final commands from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory one hour before the flight.

At an exact moment, the copter's twin rotor blades were spun up to 2,537 rpm. A final system's check was performed as the blades cut through Mars' ultra thin atmosphere.

Likened to the Wright Brothers first powered flight, Ingenuity took off from the Martian surface at 5:33 a.m. EDT, and stayed aloft for 51.9 seconds. The controlled flight flew a distance of seven feet and up to an altitude of 16 feet.

“The helicopter came to a stop, hovered in place, and made turns to point its camera in different directions,” Ingenuity’s chief pilot Håvard Grip said on Thursday. “Then it headed back to the center of the airfield to land."

NASA Rover Discovers Unusual Rock on Mars

A NASA rover alone on the desert plains of the planet Mars has happened across an out of place big rock and this has grabbed the space agencies attention.

The two foot rock known as Block Island, was discovered on July 18 as the rover Opportunity was moving along and passing it by. NASA scientists then put the breaks on the rover's treads and turned it around to move in and photograph the rock.

NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, believe the dark grey rock could be that of a meteorite.

Little information was released on Friday by JPL, however the rock will be studied to look for origins of this mysterious fragment from space.


Opportunity took the two images on July 28th, 2009, on the 1959 solar Martian day or SOL. According to JPL, "Scientists will be testing the rock with the particle X-ray spectrometer to get composition measurements and to confirm if indeed it is a meteorite."

The Opportunity rover only travels about 50 to 75 feet a day on average; and has moved only 10.7 miles across the Martian surface.

The rover was launched from Cape Canaveral in July 2003, and arrived on Mars in January 2004 -- a few weeks after Opportunity's sister rover, Spirit, arrived following joint launches weeks apart.