Ingenuity will head toward another new airfield. NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity will take to the air again this weekend, if all goes according to plan. Ingenuity’s handlers are prepping the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper for its seventh Martian flight, which will take place no earlier than Sunday (June 6).
The plan is to send Ingenuity to a new airfield, about 350 feet (105 meters) south of its current location on the floor of Jezero Crater.
“This will mark the second time the helicopter will land at an airfield that it did not survey from the air during a previous flight,” NASA officials https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/306/ingenuity-flight-7-preview/” data-component-tracked=”1″>wrote in an update on Friday (June 4). “Instead, the Ingenuity team is relying on imagery collected by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that suggests this new base of operations is relatively flat and has few surface obstructions.”
Data from the flight will be beamed home to Earth over the three days following the flight, they added.