NASA’s Creation Helicopter soared in the sky again on its 32nd flight, Creation traveled about 308 feet (94 meters), stayed aloft for more than 55 seconds and reached a top speed of 10.5 mph (17.1 km/h), according to the lab. NASA’s Jet Propulsion (JPL) in Southern California, which operates the Mars Helicopter mission.
According to Space, this was the 32nd creative flight overall and the second this month, as the 4-pound (1.8 kg) helicopter took off on September 6.
That earlier flight brought the helicopter closer to the ancient river delta at the bottom of the Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometre-wide hole in the ground that the helicopter and its persistent roving robotic partner have been exploring since February 2021.
Perseverance has been studying the delta for several months, and since July the car-sized rover has collected four rock samples, two of them from rocks rich in organic molecules, the building blocks of carbon-containing life.
If all goes according to plan, researchers will be able to study this material in detail here on Earth, as NASA and the European Space Agency collaborate to bring probe samples to our planet, possibly as early as 2033.
The sample return process includes two similarly innovative helicopters that can carry samples from one or more research repositories to a rocket that launches them from the Red Planet.