The 52nd flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took place back on 26 April but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing.
After that, the small rotorcraft went silent for months, until 28 June, when the contact was re-established.
The goal of Flight 52, a 363-meter and 139-second-long flight, was to reposition the helicopter and take images of the Martian surface for the rover’s science team.
The Ingenuity team expected the communications dropout because a hill stood between the helicopter’s landing location and the Perseverance rover’s position, blocking communication between the two. The rover acts as a radio relay between the helicopter and mission controllers at JPL. In anticipation of this loss of communications, the Ingenuity team had already developed re-contact plans for when the rover would drive back within range.
Read more at NASA's website.