The author wrote "Ingenuity is now soaring from one new airfield to another." Rather pathetic a space author doesn't know the meaning of "soar." Helicopters don't soar.
They were going to test it out while the rover remained nearby by necessity, but if even if the helo didn’t break or crash, the rover was going to be moving on for its own mission.
They didn’t expect that the helicopter should do so well that it would be able to follow the rover and land at new sites.
With this lil’ “hovercraft” performing way beyond expectations, the author might have been taking dramatic license by using “soar” .
What factors were responsible for the five-flight lifetime? Overall battery life and recharge cycles (five cycle seems very low).
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This helicopter was intended only as a proof-of-concept so the engineers only scoped out a limited set of tests not knowing if it would encounter something unexpected. As it was, the 1st flight was delayed a bit as preflight checkout showed some anomalies. NASA engineers downloaded and updated the onboard software, then made the first successful flight.
Really is a neat bit of engineering.
Don’t know if you saw the video, but there was one flight where Perseverance had its microphone on during one of the helicopter’s flights. It’s incredible the sound carries in such a thin atmosphere. Ingenuity sounded like a really revved up leaf blower!