November 22, 2024

NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Flies at a Lower Altitude Than Ever Before – Captures a Mars Rock Feature in 3D

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also handles the operations presentation activity throughout its extended mission for NASA Headquarters. It is supported by NASAs Science, Aeronautics Research, and Space Technology objective directorates. NASAs Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley, and NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, offered considerable flight efficiency analysis and technical help throughout Ingenuitys advancement. Lockheed Martin Space created and made the Mars Helicopter Delivery System.

This 3D view of a rock mound called “Faillefeu” was created from information collected by NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter throughout its 13th flight at Mars on September 4, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The rotorcraft captures nuances of rocky outcrop during aerial reconnaissance.
NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter provided a 3D view of a rock-covered mound during its 13th flight on September 4. The strategy for this reconnaissance mission into the “South Seítah” region of Mars Jezero Crater was to record images of this geologic target– nicknamed “Faillefeu” (after a medieval abbey in the French Alps) by the agencys Perseverance rover team– and to acquire the color pictures from a lower altitude than ever before: 26 feet (8 meters).
This image of an area the Mars Perseverance rover group calls “Faillefeu” was captured by NASAs Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 13th flight at Mars on September 4, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
About 33 feet (10 meters) broad, the mound shows up just north of the center of the image, with some big rocks casting shadows. Extending throughout the top of the image is a portion of “Artuby,” a ridgeline more than half a mile (900 meters) large. At the bottom of the image, and running vertically up into the middle, are a few of the many sand ripples that occupy South Seítah.

Best seen with red-blue glasses, this stereo, or 3D, view (also called an anaglyph) was created by combining information from 2 images taken 16 feet (5 meters) apart by the color electronic camera aboard Ingenuity
More About Ingenuity.
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which likewise handles the operations presentation activity during its prolonged objective for NASA Headquarters. Lockheed Martin Space developed and made the Mars Helicopter Delivery System.
More About Perseverance
A key goal for Perseverances objective on Mars is astrobiology, consisting of the look for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will define the worlds geology and previous climate, lead the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send out spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance objective is part of NASAs Moon to Mars expedition approach, which consists of Artemis missions to the Moon that will help get ready for human expedition of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, constructed and handles operations of the Perseverance rover.