NASA’s Martian Helicopter Conducts 20th Flight on Red Planet

NASA'S Martian helicopter Ingenuity conducted its 20th flight on the surface of the Red Planet, Space website reported on Tuesday.

The device succeeded in landing on the Jezro Crater that NASA's Perseverance Rover collected some samples from the site identify the geological nature of Mars.

"Flight 20 was a success! In its 130.3 seconds of flight, the Mars Helicopter covered 391 meters [1,283 feet] at a speed of 4.4 meters per second [9.8 mph], bringing it closer to NASA Perseverance landing location," the leading space agency tweeted.

Last December, the first-ever flying object on the surface of Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, reached a new milestone.

The helicopter did a total of more than 30 minutes and 48 seconds of air time, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

The data of the Ingenuity helicopter was released because of “an unexpected cutoff to the in-flight data stream as the helicopter descended toward the surface at the conclusion of its flight.”

The statement added: “NASA’s Perseverance rover in February has been battling normal seasonal changes in the atmosphere that require its rotor to spin a little faster against thinner air, which appears to be working well so far.”

Regarding the details of the upcoming flight, it is supposed to fly 754 feet (230 meters) with 5.6 mph (9 kph) speed.

Last September, the mission of NASA’s major milestone related to Mars achieved a new record after the probe hinted evidence of water’s existence on the Red Planet.

The probe initiated an early examination of the previously collected samples from Mars’ surface. The project’s team tweeted under the name of NASA’s Perservance Mars Rover: “My first two rock samples are likely volcanic with hints of salts that may hold bubbles of ancient water.”

The team added: “They’re pieces of a bigger puzzle, to learn: how this area formed – its history of water – if past life ever existed here.”

Ken Farley, the project’s team member, said: “It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment,” asserting: “It’s a big deal that the water was there a long time.”

Perseverance will continue to collect more samples from the Red Planet’s surface to get them back to Earth for more studies.