NASA’s Mars Helicopter Completes 12 Flights 

The U.S. space agency NASA reports the Ingenuity helicopter, the tiny aircraft that landed on Mars with the agency’s Perseverance rover earlier this year, has completed its 12th flight over the red planet. 

On its Twitter account late Monday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which oversees the Perseverance mission, reported the success of the latest flight of the tiny aircraft, noting it flew over what JPL called “the geological wonder that is the ‘South Séítah’ region of Mars.”  In its tweet, JPL reported the craft climbed to a height of 10 meters over the martian surface and flew a 450-meter round trip for a total flight time of 169 seconds.    The flight took place early Monday, but because of the delay in transmission time from Mars, its success was not confirmed until later.