Ingenuity Mars helicopter completes second successful test flight

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter carried out a second successful test flight Thursday, lifting off from a site dubbed "Wright Brothers Field" in Jezero Crater. It climbed to 16 feet in the ultra-thin Martian atmosphere, tilting to one side for a short out-and-back traverse, and then touched down to close out a 52-second flight.

Bob Balaram, chief engineer of the $80 million Ingenuity project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said telemetry from the four-pound helicopter indicated the flight met all the test objectives and helped confirm pre-flight computer models reflected actual conditions on Mars. The helicopter's counter-rotating four-foot-long blades spun up to some 2,500 rpm at 5:33 a.m. EDT (12:33 p.m. local time on Mars), lifting the boxy drone to an altitude of 16 feet, about six feet higher than its initial test flight on Monday.