NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity flies for 7th time

June 9 (UPI) — NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity moved to a new landing site about 115 feet away from its original position on the Red Planet during its seventh flight.

The space agency announced Tuesday’s successful new flight, along with a photo the aerial drone shot of its own shadow during flight.

“With each flight we gain additional real world info on the performance of the rotor and its thermal characteristics, which allows us to incrementally increase allowable flight times,” NASA posted on Twitter.

Another successful flight #MarsHelicopter completed its 7th flight and second within its operations demo phase. It flew for 62.8 seconds and traveled ~106 meters south to a new landing spot. Ingenuity also took this black-and-white navigation photo during flight. pic.twitter.com/amluVq9wbb— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) June 8, 2021

The Perseverance rover landed on Mars carrying the helicopter Feb. 18. Ingenuity dropped to the surface on April 4 and made its historic first flight April 19.

During that first flight, the helicopter only raised itself 10 feet above the surface before landing after 39 seconds — purely to demonstrate that a powered aircraft could fly on another planet.

NASA’s original plan for Ingenuity was to retire it at the end of April and possibly fly it so far and high that it would crash.

But after several successful flights, the agency decided to extend the tiny 4-pound aircraft’s mission, possibly aiding the rover’s ability to find interesting rocks and features to explore.

NASA said Wednesday that Perseverance has begun its science phase and would drive to an overlook in Jezero Crater to find four places to drill rocks samples in a search for signs of ancient life.