[Music] NASA's helicopter on Mars called Ingenuity has made its final flight on the red [Music] planet this small aircraft landed on Mars almost 3 years ago inside the robotic Rover perseverance and in April 2021 it became the first helicopter to fly on another planet since then Ingenuity has helped NASA learn more about the surface of of Mars by sending back photos of areas that are too dangerous for the robotic Rover to [Music] explore like sand dunes or hard-to-reach areas of a large crater I
ngenuity also helped Engineers discover more about flying aircraft on other planets compared to helicopter flights on Earth flying on Mars comes with many challenges one of the biggest being the planet's atmosphere even though we can't see it or feel it the atmosphere on Earth is more dense or thicker than on other [Music] planets when the blades of a helicopter Spin Air moves and this creates an upward Force called lift when there is enough Force the helicopter can take off the faster the blade
s spin the greater the lift the atmosphere on Mars is a lot thinner or less dense than on earth when a helicopter's blades spin on Mars the upward force or lift is not as strong as on Earth so a helicopter might not be able to fly to solve this problem NASA increased the speed of Ingenuity blades making them spin 10 times faster than a helicopter on Earth Earth this provided Ingenuity with enough lift to take flight in Mars thinner or less dense atmosphere NASA originally planned for Ingenuity t
o fly just five times however it turned out it was able to do much more than everyone thought possible making an incredible 72 flights instead powered by solar energy Ingenuity flew for a total of 128 8 minutes flying as fast as 10 m/ second and as high as 24 M Ingenuity provided unique aerial views of Mars despite all this success a recent photo of the helicopter's Shadow showed that it had a damaged blade bringing an end to Ingenuity Mission but the team at Nasa are already developing the next
generation of aircraft for exploring space based on what the now retired Ingenuity has taught [Music] them thanks for watching this week's episode of twig science reporter don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss our weekly update
Comments
What are your thoughts on this story? Have you been following Ingenuity’s discoveries on Mars? We’d love to hear from you below👇
I am a science program specialist our TK-8 school district. The depth that you are going into in the new format leaves a lot of the younger students out. It is too much for them to understand. Is this purposeful? If not, please go back to the 3-story format. It was varied, accessible and interesting to all levels...from TK to 5th! Reporter was one of the best things about Twig. Please bring it back and return to the discussion-provoking format that makes students want to research the stories more!
Poor Ingenuity! :(
I wathed this at school today!
The kahoot link isn't working :(