After the Perseverance rover deposited Ingenuity on the surface on April 4, JPL originally planned the first flight for a week later. The road to liftoff wasn’t perfectly smooth. “They’ve freed us from the surface now forever.” Countdown to liftoff “What the Ingenuity team has done is given us the third dimension,” said Michael Watkins, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) director, in a press briefing on Monday. Grip concluded: "It's awesome to actually get to see this occur, and it reinforces the accuracy of our modeling and our understanding of how to best operate Ingenuity.Ingenuity snaps a picture of its own shadow from midair, with a camera it uses for navigation. Ingenuity is now prepping to take to the skies of Mars for the sixteenth time which will happen no earlier than Saturday, November 20. Though short the demonstration was an important milestone in our exploration of space, showing that a rotor-based craft can pilot through the thin atmosphere of Mars.įollowing Flight 13 the Ingenuity copter took a break with the rest of the Mars surface vehicles, including Perseverance, waiting for Mars to pass from around the opposite side of the sun from the earth.ĭuring this annual event known as the Mars solar conjunction, which this year lasted from October 2 to October 16, communications from Earth to the Red Planet are blocked, meaning instructions can't be sent to the Mars rovers. After that, the rotorcraft made its first flight on April 19, 2021, during which it climbed to an altitude of roughly 10 feet off the surface of Mars.Īfter hovering briefly, it returned to the surface of Mars. As an exposure of the oldest geologic unit on the Jezero crater floor, the feature contains olivine and hydrated minerals that record volcanism and other geological processes that occurred on ancient Mars.Įvaluating when and how these minerals were deposited could improve our understanding of the geologic evolution of the region of Mars that Perseverance is exploring.Ĭarried to Mars by Preserverance, Ingenuity was "released" by the rover when it reached a suitable airfield location. Studying Séítah is an important part of our exploration of Mars. Our flight simulations indicated that this little 'breather' would help the helicopter keep track of its heading in spite of the significant terrain variations. "Since the helicopter's navigation filter prefers flat terrain, we programmed in a waypoint near the ridgeline, where the helicopter slows down and hovers for a moment. "We took off from the crater floor and flew over an elevated ridgeline before dipping into Séítah," said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity Chief Pilot, JPL. The images will be used by the Perseverance Rover team to gain insights into the Jezero Crater and, specifically, into the geological processes that formed the characteristics of Séítah. Séítah is made up of ridges and outcrops in a Jezero Crater, an ancient lake bed leftover from a period at least four billion years ago when liquid water was abundant on the Martian surface.įlying above Séítah at an altitude of 26 feet, the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter collected images of a rocky outcrop from various angles. The sojourn, which lasted just over 160 seconds, was complicated because it involved the helicopter flying varied terrain within the Séítah geological feature. While this isn't the Mars Helicopter's first, second, or even third flight over Mars, flight 13 turned out to be a particularly tricky one for ingenuity. "And while the helicopter is little more than a speck in the wide view taken through the left eye, it gives viewers a good feel for the size of the environment that Ingenuity is exploring." Even at 300 meters away, we get a magnificent closeup of takeoff and landing through Mastcam-Z's right eye," deputy principal investigator for the Mastcam-Z instrument at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Justin Maki, said. "The value of Mastcam-Z really shines through with these video clips. The latest video from NASA shows off more than the copter's flying ability, however, the footage also acts as an impressive demonstration of its rover partner's technology. The lift-offs of the robotic Mars Ingenuity Helicopter, which landed on Mars alongside the Preserverance Rover in February 2021, represented the first powered and controlled flights of a craft created by humanity in the skies of an alien world. Perseverance caught the images with its two-camera Mastcam-Z: one clip shows the take-off and landing of the four-pound rotorcraft, while the other shows its flight profile as it travels over the martian surface. NASA Astronaut Jessica Watkins to Become First Black Woman on ISS.Alien Life Could Be Found on Mars Thanks to NASA Rover's New Trick.Scientists Warn of Bacterial 'Alien Invasion' Caused by Space Missions.
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