Here is today's best video about the flight of "Ingenuity" over Mars

Mission planners do not know how long this brave machine will last, reports arstechnica.

At the beginning of September, a small helicopter Ingenuity, which NASA sent to Mars along with the rover Perseverance (Perseverance), made its 13th flight to the Red Planet.

It was a difficult flight from a technical point of view - almost 210 meters over rocky terrain, largely impassable for the rover. Ingenuity reached a maximum height of about 8 meters before landing safely again. But what makes this flight truly special is that Perseverance was able to track the take-off and flight of the helicopter.

Images of this flight were only recently transmitted to Earth, and the rover team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory combined the data into a video showing almost the entire flight. These shots offer, by far, the best view we've ever seen of how Ingenuity, flies over the surface of Mars.

During the flight Ingenuity was located approximately 300 meters from the rover. But, fortunately, Persistence the most advanced pair of eyes ever sent to Mars. The instrument "Mastcam Z" (the letter "Z" means scaling) located on top of the rover has two cameras designed to provide the most clear images of Mars and create three-dimensional images.

On the frames without magnification, this contrast is clearly visible, and Ingenuity visible only as a tiny speck in the distance.

After this September flight Ingenuity it became a little easier. It stood for about six weeks during the conjunction of Mars with the Sun, when the red planet and the Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun, which makes communication difficult. Engineers Ingenuity also had to face a problem connected with small helicopter flight control engines, and then with the rarefaction of the atmosphere during the Martian winter.

To compensate for the thinner atmosphere, Ingenuity had to prove that she could rotate her blades faster than they were intended. After a short test flight at the end of October Ingenuity triumphantly returned on November 6, made a 407-meter flight over the winter Martian surface, rising to a height of 12 meters. Her next, sixteenth flight of an autonomous helicopter may take place this Saturday.

The mission planners don't know how long this brave machine will last, because it's well past its design life, and they're just enjoying its flight. Thanks to this new video, we can too.