Ingenuity completes 56th flight on Mars
Click for interactive map.
According to a tweet yesterday by the Ingenuity engineering team, the helicopter successfully completed its 56th flight on Mars on August 25, 2023, flying 1,345 feet to the northwest at a height of 39 feet for 141 seconds, or two minutes and twenty-one seconds. The distance traveled and the flight time were slightly longer than planned, but that likely was because the helicopter used that extra time to determine a safe landing site.
The green line on the map above shows the approximate new position of Ingenuity, positioned close to the planned route of Perseverance as indicated by the red dotted line. Perseverance’s present location is marked by the blue dot.
Neretva Vallis is the gap in the western rim of Jezero crater through which the delta had flowed eons before, and is the rover’s eventual target in order to begin exploring the terrain beyond, known to be very rich in mineral content.
Meanwhile, the Ingenuity engineering team has already released its flight plan for the 57th flight, heading north about 670 feet and targeting tomorrow for flight.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Click for interactive map.
According to a tweet yesterday by the Ingenuity engineering team, the helicopter successfully completed its 56th flight on Mars on August 25, 2023, flying 1,345 feet to the northwest at a height of 39 feet for 141 seconds, or two minutes and twenty-one seconds. The distance traveled and the flight time were slightly longer than planned, but that likely was because the helicopter used that extra time to determine a safe landing site.
The green line on the map above shows the approximate new position of Ingenuity, positioned close to the planned route of Perseverance as indicated by the red dotted line. Perseverance’s present location is marked by the blue dot.
Neretva Vallis is the gap in the western rim of Jezero crater through which the delta had flowed eons before, and is the rover’s eventual target in order to begin exploring the terrain beyond, known to be very rich in mineral content.
Meanwhile, the Ingenuity engineering team has already released its flight plan for the 57th flight, heading north about 670 feet and targeting tomorrow for flight.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I will proba¨bly be pestering our poor Robert here with some evening entertainment links to podcasters who do amazing things in steel cutting engineering, and art for that matter. Because I am discovering some pretty fabulous stuff in that genre as my recent story is that I’ve been unemployed since the covid [deleted] story. I were an economist as in business administration, into logistics so more the numbers guy than most business guys, but less so than any engineering guy. Stuck in the middle, and that’s never good. One has to be best at something.
So now, even at mature age, I am being retrained into metal cutting. Perhaps one can see some parallel to the Great Power politics concerning sanctions and rearmament in the background there. Anyway, I think it is mostly because the guys who did this job before are entering retirement age and that’s why there’s a pretty deasperate demand for new labor even in a shrinking European manufacturing industry.
But what do I care for the big picture? I get to learn how to cut steel, and that’s great fun! School learns me the fine stuff using small machines. But I might soon get a job at a company that is mass manufacturing two meter diameter large, decimeter thick and some tons heavy cones made out of mangan steel, Hadfield steel, used to crush rocks. Pretty much the heaviest steel industry there is. And that gives me a hard on! In a 150 year old factory building built out of red clay bricks once put by hand into beautiful patterns, in the center of a small town where in one end the raw metal is molten and cast to in the other end finally be paint coated and delivered. And somewhere inbetween my task would be to operate a huge machine that cuts the sloping surface to within 0.03 angular degrees precision, I heard. All of this is completely new to me, and I love learning new stuff! And I love big heavy hard thingies that crush granite.
Here’s btw a short illustration of how hollow steel spheres are made. Out of some soft ductile steel alloy, of course and not hard Hadfield steel. One welds together some steel plates to a polygon, fills it with water and, well, does what is looks and sounds like here:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pm6hM77JD3w
(Steel is a crazy industry)!
LocalFluff: As you know, I very much welcome your comments. Always worthwhile and informative.
However, adding a few ** to an obscenity doesn’t cut it. I’ve deleted the offensive word. You were once banned for a week for such language. Please don’t force me to do it again. Be the civilized adult I know you are, and find mature ways to write about this stuff. You have no reason to behave like a barbarian.