As Ingenuity scouts for Mars sample return, NASA says the milestone flight and larger Perseverance rover mission represents 'the meaning of life, the universe and everything.'
of the Feb. 4 flight. The number has resonance for fans of the 1979 Douglas Adams novel and associated television series and films, who learned of 42's significance to our cosmos via a fictional supercomputer quoted in the book.Ingenuity's original manifest called for only five flights after the four-pound rover alighted on the surface of Mars underneath the belly of the Perseverance rover.
As Ingenuity proved flights were possible on the Red Planet, its scope quickly expanded. Now the drone has become a reliable partner in scouting ahead for Perseverance's sampling and sorties, so much so that NASA altered its Mars sample return plans in 2022 to include two fetch helicopters. When that joint NASA-European Space Agency mission arrives on Mars, the prime plan calls for Perseverance to ferry samples to a waiting spacecraft by itself. Failing that, however, the two
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