NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter has completed its eleventh flight over the planet, taking dozens of images, including one where its mother ship – the rover Perseverance – is nearly impossible to see.
Helicopters took photos of boulders, dunes, and shores in the South Seitah region at Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient river delta where NASA hope to find the remains of microbial life.
“Ingenuity’s aerial photography is great – but even better when you think of ‘Where’s Perseverance?’ play. with them,” said Robert Hogg, a senior systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
He said, “If you find our rover and zoom in on it, you can see some details like the wheels, remote sensing mast and MMRTG” – a multi-mission thermoelectric radioisotope generator, its power source – “at the far end”.
The rover is spotted in bright white from a distance of about 1,600 feet (500 m) and an altitude of 39 feet (12 m).
This zoomed in shot should make things a little easier. Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech
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“The laws of physics may say that it’s nearly impossible to fly on Mars, but heavier-than-air planes are much more difficult to fly on the Red Planet,” joked the space agency of the Ingenuity mission.
The 11th flight of the small helicopter since then maiden voyage in April Designed to stay ahead of the rover, it flies at about 11 miles per hour (five meters per second) to capture images of interesting geological features.
More about the Mars Perseverance Rover
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Intelligence works independently and cannot be controlled by NASA because of the distance between Earth and Mars.
It takes more than 11 minutes to send a radio signal 287 million kilometers (178 million miles) back to Earth – while the final flight only took 130 seconds.
Persistence follows failed the first attempt to take a rock sample from Mars as part of a search for signs of ancient life on the planet.
NASA said on Wednesday that this was due to the rock being very soft and therefore not strong enough to take samples.
–The Perseverance sample tube is empty. Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech
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The rover is equipped with a two-meter-long robotic arm, at the ends of which a hollow core drill and percussion drill are attached to take samples from beneath the Martian surface.
About half a kilogram of rock and soil samples will be temporarily stored in large titanium tubes left by explorers on the planet to be collected by unconfirmed future missions.
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