I would be lying if I didn’t say that I have a certain fondness for Ingenuity, the first man-made aircraft capable of flying on another planet (except for modules used in manned missions to the moon to return astronauts to orbit, of course). and hundreds of other fascinating space reconnaissance missions, but I’m especially fascinated by the mini helicopter that He’ll be flying to Mars in a few days.

In fact, it’s been almost a year since the Ingenuity let us cheer and clap when her first flight on the red planet was completed, and since then nothing but surpasses herself. And that’s right, let’s remember the original plan was for Ingenuity to make five flights, in which he would take many pictures of his surroundings. Some photos that will later be transferred to Perseverance, which will then send them to Earth. Five missions.

Y NASA has confirmed the success of its 25th flight. Yes, he’s five times the mission’s original goals, and at least for now, we’re keeping our fingers crossed, there’s nothing to indicate he’s at the end of his life. And the clearest proof of that is that, as we told you a few days ago, this last flight was a record, or more precisely, a record. And it was the longest flight with distance 704 meters, but also so far the fastest with speed almost 20 kilometers per houras we can read in Slah Gear.

As we told you at the time, a second task was soon added to the original imaging mission: exploring the terrain. increase the safety of movements Perseverance, a task he had undertaken in the past year, even though this task was initially reserved for future helicopters from other missions. Of course, as we recalled a few days ago, NASA and Hubble taught us a lesson about devices that far exceed their original goals, and we can see another example of this in Ingenuity’s new success.

These days, the Ingenuity is gradually approaching the area of ​​the Lake Crater in which researchers believe that there was a large body of water millions of years ago. So the goal is to draw the path that Perseverance will have to follow to reach this point in order to take samples. Some samples that try to verify whether life existed on Mars at the time.