NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Overcomes Technical Glitches to Continue Flying

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, which completed its five-flight mission in May 2021, has continued to fly on Mars for months and dozens more flights, defying expectations. The helicopter's hardiness has inspired the team to include helicopters modeled off it in a future Mars mission. Ingenuity's delicate parts stood up to the Martian cold, and NASA adjusted by using data on Martian sunrises to calculate when the helicopter would thaw out each morning and regain enough charge to power on. The team recently located Ingenuity after six days of searching, and it continues to fly as a scout, gathering valuable data on the Red Planet.