What is Ingenuity Mars Helicopter?

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About Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

It is a small, autonomous aircraft. that flew to Mars aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover.
It was sent to Mars to perform experimental flight tests to determine if powered, controlled flight at the Red Planet was possible.
Ingenuity’s mission is experimental in nature and completely independent of the rover’s science mission.
Ingenuity was deployed to the surface on April 4, 2021.
On April 19, it became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet.
- It rose to a height of 10 feet, hovered for 30 seconds, and then descended back to the ground.
- The flight lasted 39.1 seconds.
- It managed to fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which isn’t conducive for flying.
It’s piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms.
Perseverance acts as a relay between the chopper and the earth.

Key Facts about Perseverance Rover

It is a robotic explorer to land on Mars as part of NASA’s ongoing Mars 2020 Mission.
Main Job: Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth.
The rover will collect samples of rock and soil, encase them in tubes, and leave them on the planet’s surface to be returned to Earth at a future date.
Launch: It was launched on July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Landing: Successfully landed on the surface of Mar’s Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.
Features:
- It is about 3 metres long, 2.7 metres wide, and 2.2 metres tall.
- It is about the size of a car but weighs only about 1,025 kilograms with all instruments on board.
- Power source: Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG).
Converts heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity.

Q1) What is regolith?

Regolith, a region of loose unconsolidated rock and dust that sits atop a layer of bedrock. On Earth, regolith also includes soil, which is a biologically active medium and a key component in plant growth. Regolith serves as a source of other geologic resources, such as aluminum, iron, clays, diamonds, and rare earth elements.

Source: NASA Re-Establishes Contact With Ingenuity Helicopter On Mars After Outage