The MarsIngenuity Helicopter completed its sixth flight last Saturday – though with a slight hiccup.
In a blog post Thursday, NASA sSouthern California-basedJet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) detailed the events surrounding the in-flight anomaly.
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Chief Pilot Håvard Grip explained that the goal of the mission was to expand the flight envelope and demonstrate aerial-imaging capabilities by taking stereo images of a region of interest to the west.
To do so, the rotorcraft climbed to an altitude of 33 feet before translating 492 southwest at a speed of 9 mph and again moving 49 feet south while taking images facing west.
It then flew another 164 feet northeast to land.