The Ingenuity helicopter is without a doubt a great feat of engineering. At first glance, of course, it may seem that this is a small ingenuity, comparable to a drone that we can buy for less than a hundred euros, but of course in this case we must remember the many peculiarities of the journey of the Mars Perseverance companion in order to conclude again that this the little helicopter really has very, very little normality.

It’s been more than two and a half years since Perseverance began its journey to Mars, and last February we celebrated two years since its arrival on the surface of the red planet. At that moment, the long journey ended. but problems began for the first device designed by a human being to fly on another planet. And we’re back to anniversaries, because next Wednesday, April 19, it will be two years since Ingenuity’s first-ever flight. The flight was launched by NASA and its success opened a great door to the future of space exploration.

After the first flight, the successors arrived and also the mission responsible decided that, due to its excellent performance, Ingenuity could not only take pictures of the Crater Lake, but also become a scout in the service of Perseverance, avoiding the mobile laboratory to pass through dangerous areas that would their orography could complicate or even make its subsequent movements impossible.

In the initial mission definition, the helicopter was supposed to make a total of five flights. However, as we can read on CNN, Ingenuity has reached fifty flights to Mars. For now, the most recent of these took place last Thursday and, as is customary in helicopter operations, went according to plan, satisfactorily and without incident. And yes, on such a special flight, he again broke the previous record and climbed to 18 metersthe highest height achieved so far, 322.2 meters in flight.

The helicopter’s short but intense history is marked by limits being pushed, records set and broken, all to remember, in some truly challenging operating conditions. This has led to concerns about its persistence on more than one occasion, and we will experience a similar situation again as the next Martian winter approaches. But whether he gets over it or not, there’s no doubt that Ingenuity has already made history.