The four-pound Ingenuity helicopter, NASA’s first extraterrestrial airborne rover, hit a snag in its sixth flight on Mars when a photo taken by the aircraft didn’t register with the navigation system, causing the copter to sway back and forth in the air, NBC News reports.
Ingenuity was around 33 feet in the air as it flew, using landmarks on the ground as waypoints as it flew a planned flight of 705 feet. The error occurred about a minute into the flight, causing Ingenuity to tilt back and forth about 20 degrees off center and causing power spikes as the copter was around 215 feet from its planned destination.
Even with the flight error, the aircraft was still able to land 16 feet from its target, Havard Grip, the helicopter’s chief pilot, posted online. A built-in system to provide extra margin for stability “came to the rescue,” he wrote.