The Mars Ingenuity helicopter failed to take off for the 4th flight on Red Planet.

The NASA helicopter Mars Ingenuity had to do a real training this morning (29 April), but things did not go as planned.

The 4-lb. (1.8 kg) helicopter was scheduled to take off from the bottom of the Jezero crater of Mars today at about 10:12 a.m. EDT (1412 GMT), launching its fourth flight on the red planet. That's not what happened.

"Aim high and fly, fly still." The #MarsHelicopter's fourth ambitious flight has not departed, but the team is evaluating the data and will be looking to try again shortly. We'll keep you updated,” said NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which is managing Ingenuity's technology demonstration mission through Twitter today.

Ingenuity also had a hiccup at the beginning of its first flight attempt, failing to enter flight mode as expected. In response, the helicopter team altered the command sequence teleported from Earth – a landmark that allowed Ingenuity to fly to Mars for the first time on April 19.

Tests here on Earth suggested that the correction would be efficient about 85% of the time, said members of the Ingenuity team. It is possible that the same problem has now arisen, and the latest attempt has just fallen into the unfortunate 15% window. But we will have to wait for Ingenuity officials to conduct the necessary analyses to find out more.

Resourcefulness landed with the NASA Perseverance rover in February. 18 within 28 miles wide (45 km) Jezero, which hosted a large lake and a river delta in the ancient past.

Ingenuity was deployed from the womb of Persévérance on April 3 and began preparing for its flight campaign, which is designed to show that aerial exploration is possible on Mars.

The helicopter has now flown three times, one by helicopter on April 19, April 22, and April 25. These exits became more and more ambitious, with the solar-powered helicopter travelling 330 feet (100 metres) at a top speed of 4.5 mph (7.2 km/h) during the 80-second flight on April 25.

The fourth flight was designed to further extend these limitations. Today's plan called for Ingenuity to cover about 872 feet (266 m) of ground and reach a top speed of 8 mph (13 kph) while staying aloft for 117 seconds, NASA officials said.

The window of ingenuity flying is drawing to an end. The campaign is capped at five flights over a one-month stretch from the April 3 deployment date, because Perseverance needs to start focusing on its own mission, which involves hunting for signs of long-gone Mars life and collecting samples for future return to Earth.

(Perseverance helped to document and support the work of Ingenuity; for example, communications to and from the helicopter must go through the rover.)

It's unclear at this point if Ingenuity will be able to squeeze five flights in before its time is up, but the helicopter team members have said they will do their best to make that happen.