FOLLOWING A WEEK of nervous anticipation, on 5 July teams at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) responsible for controlling the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars completed the ninth and most spectacular flight to date of this pioneering little drone. Ingenuity completed a flight lasting 2 min 46 sec, covering a distance of 625 m across terrain that the Perseverance rover is expected to traverse in the coming months. This was the first flight in which science tasks were the primary objective. It was conducted at a maximum height of 10 m and a maximum speed of 5 m/s.
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