Fourth Flight a Success for NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter successfully completed a fourth, more challenging flight on the Red Planet on April 30, 2021.

Flight Test No. 4 aimed for a longer flight time, longer distance, and more image capturing to begin to demonstrate its ability to serve as a scout on Mars. Ingenuity climbed to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) before flying south and back for an 872-foot (266-meter) round trip. In total, Ingenuity was in the air for 117 seconds, another set of records for the helicopter. The fourth flight lifted off from and returned to “Wright Brothers Field” in Jezero Crater, Mars.

The Ingenuity team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California determined that the flight was successful after receiving data from the helicopter and imagery from the Perseverance Mars rover.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021.

Perseverance touched down at Octavia E. Butler Landing with Ingenuity attached to its belly on Feb. 18, 2021. The helicopter was deployed to the surface of Jezero Crater on April 3.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[katiekawaii]

The engineers, the scientists, everyone involved in this thing has just been straight-up _NAILING IT._ It's incredible.

[malcolmar]

Well done JPL and incredible! Now that Ingenuity has successfully completed its initial missions in flying colors the crew at JPL are able to push it is see what else it is capable of. Much respect to the JPL team because this is nothing less than some excellent engineering and build quality on display here.

[lazulycreativ]

⭐Congratulations to all the technicians and scientists who make this magnificent and wonderful epic possible, a big hug to all of you !!!⭐🎶

[thomasgoodwin]

Now comes the fun part. WORK! May the collaboration live long and prospect. Well done!

[josellorca]

Congrats from Costa Rica. A great achivement for humankind. Thanks for your important work!

[farrider]

Also thanks for the briefing on near future plans for Ingenuity °

[copperNick-North]

Congratulations from Spain !. I suggest a climb to 10 meters, shoting in color every 2 meters focused in the WSW mesa ( with the face of old fisher that I call "the kapetan", captain, in bosnian after Jezero lake ) until we can see its basis since apretiation of distances in Mars isn´t the same as in the Earth. Thanks, and extend helibot missions

[ingridllinas]

Congratulations once again. 117 seconds were more than expected. I heard of 90 min, as told in the very beginning. Swirling view was quite interesting. Have even more success!

[Dr.scottcase]

I am extremely happy that the team finally recognized the value of creating a symbiotic relationship between perseverance and ingenuity for the tremendous opportunity it offers I was worried about where they were going to go after the fifth flight and it looks like you’re moving in a very positive direction :-)

[onebylandtwoifbysearunifby]

0:24 is an amazing photo.
Seeing a flying thing nestled into the MARS Atmosphere!
Did not think it possible.
Congratulations👍

[DanielSMatthews]

Hard to tell from the graph, did they fix the position precision? That would be a big step toward sending it on "real" multihop missions and still getting it back again.

[willinwoods]

Amazing and wonderful in the most literal sense. Congratulations on an incredible feat!

[zoooksi]

Could we hear sound from Ingenuity Mars Helicopter motor during preparing to fly, flying or landing...????

[ribeiroflyby]

Perseverance has a new job, its controller flight.

[_yonas]

Awesome achievement. I have a question: why does the plot look so incredibly smooth? Does the initial data only contain min and max values, and what we see is a simple interpolation between those points or what is the deal with that? Or is this just because the y axis goes all the way to ~130m so smaller deviations aren't visible? Or is simply so incredibly stable and accurate? :)

[BookOfMorman]

A bit less thrilling visually than the previous three but very very cool! It's incredible how accurate your models have proven to be! Keep up the great work guys!

[LukeKeiser]

Question: We can hear the Martian winds from Perseverance. Can we hear the sounds from Ingenuity from Perseverance? If so, I would love to hear the audio and the expected science.

[earthlingjohn]

*Why does NASA refuse to post video of the fourth flight ?*

[manuelluquecasanave]

Congratulations JPL and I would like to watch a test with sequential way points in the flight with a combination of movement in the three axis X Y and Z, thus testing on Mars the IMU with its three accelerometer and three gyroscopes. Also flight at maximum speed and a higher altitude

[viki]

They gonna fly it eternally until it topples while landing😂