NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter captures 25th flight on video

May 31 (UPI) -- NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter took a 2,310-foot flight at 12 miles per hour recently, with NASA releasing video of the journey captured by the aircraft during it's record-breaking 25th flight on the Red Planet.

The sweeping view came from the small robotic helicopter's black-and-white navigation camera on April 8, the craft's longest and fastest flight to date, NASA said in a statement.

"For our record-breaking flight, Ingenuity's downward-looking navigation camera provided us with a breathtaking sense of what it would feel like gliding 33 feet above the surface of Mars at 12 miles per hour," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The video follows the helicopter as it heads southwest around the planet, accelerating to its maximum speed in less than three seconds. The helicopter flies over a group of sand ripples, and then over several rock fields about halfway through the 35-second video.

The 161.3-second flight was sped up approximately five times to reduce the video to a 35-second, NASA said.

The video footage ends after "relatively flat and featureless terrain appears below, providing a good landing spot," since Ingenuity's camera "has been programmed to deactivate whenever the rotorcraft is within 3 feet of the surface," the NASA statement said.

"This helps ensure any dust kicked up during takeoff and landing won't interfere with the navigation systems as it tracks features on the ground," the statement added.

To control the helicopter, pilots at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory send commands to the Perseverance Mars rover, which then relays commands to Ingenuity.

On May 3, Perseverance Mars rover mission controllers at the JPL lost communication with Ingenuity for the first time in over a year of operations on the Mars surface.

Data indicated that the loss of communication was due to the solar-powered helicopter entering a low-powered state, possibly because of the seasonal increase in the amount of dust in the Martian atmosphere and other seasonal changes, diminishing the amount of sunlight hitting the solar array.

The Perseverance mission controllers re-established communication with Ingenuity a couple days later after commanding the rover to spend almost all day listening for the helicopter's signal, which got adequate energy from its solar array to re-charge its six lithium-ion batteries.

Ingenuity became the first powered aircraft to fly on another planet on April 19, 2021. It was originally designed to perform five experimental flights over the month of April, but flawless performance prompted NASA to extend its mission.

The Ingenuity's most recent flight, its 28th flight, was on April 29 of this year, the flight log shows, and it is currently preparing for its 29th flight.

Still, over the next several months, dust storms and the winter season may limit flights.

"Currently we're going through the worst of the Martian dust storm season," said Jaako Karras, Ingenuity chief engineer, after a presentation on Friday at the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference, Space News reported. "The skies are full of dust and our solar array generation is way down."

The helicopter is "mostly hunkering down " for now, Karras added, due to the seasonal change to colder temperatures heading into winter and less solar power.

"The hope is that, if we can make it through both of those" -- dust storms and winter -- "in a handful of months we'll start getting back into Martian spring where we get very energy positive again and back to business."