Perservation probe taken by Mars drone

Ingenuity, a Mars helicopter, photographed the Mars rover’s Perseverance at a unique angle during its third flight. In the left corner of the image, the image of the probe facing the Ingenuity camera is reflected. Ingenuity’s photo was taken while moving horizontally at an altitude of 5m in the third flight conducted on April 25th. It is said that the Perservance, which landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, was about 85m away when the photo was taken.

This picture is a possible cut because Ingenuity is a Mars helicopter. Until now, many probes have grasped the landscape of Mars at eye level, but Ingenuity has taken a bird’s eye view of the desolate Mars landscape and a six-wheeled probe.

It’s a unique sight with a cut looking at the perspective from a slightly high and good view point. There are also selfies by the probe and photographs captured by satellites from Mars orbit, but they will remain in history as the first photographs of the probe from the perspective of an aerial drone.

In 1997, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder probe photographed Rover Sojourner. Behind this photo was a little rover working diligently on the surface. The Sojourner, weighing 11.5kg, was the first rover to run a celestial body other than Earth. This time, a similar commemorative photo was taken by Ingenuity, who made a motorized flight in a celestial body other than Earth.

Ingenuity flew 50m in the horizontal direction and returned to its original position while flying for 80 seconds on the third flight. The mission team may risk a collision in future test flights in order to fully evaluate Ingenuity’s performance. This empirical experiment is intended to lay the foundation for an ambitious project using aerial drones on Mars.

Meanwhile, Ingenuity’s first color photo of the surface of Mars showing traces of wheels with the Mars probe’s personal preferences was also released, drawing attention.

The first photo was taken from 5.2m above the ground with a 4208×2120 high-resolution color camera at the time of the 51.9 second test flight on April 22nd. You can see the traces of the Mars rover’s personal preference wheels and the surface of the Mars ground. Thanks to the spatial expression of hue, it makes it possible to understand the topography of Mars.

It wasn’t too far from the perspective, but it wasn’t visible in the picture. The Wright brothers field, the place where Ingenuity took off, is just taken in the center of the photo, and the landing pad is to the left of the shadow of Ingenuity. In the upper right, the Mars horizon is slightly reflected.

The second picture was taken from 5.2m above the sky, and you can see the traces of the wheel likewise.

In the third picture, this is the same. Related information can be found here.

Meanwhile, Perseverance set a record for the first time a probe recorded the sound of another probe on another planet during its fourth flight on April 30.

The three-minute video released by NASA was recorded with Mastcam-Z and audio using SuperCam microphone. Even though the Ingenuity rotor rotates at a high speed of 2,537 rpm, most of the wind breaking sound is not heard. This can be said that the Persistence is 80m away from Ingenuity, but the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, so the air is small, and the thickness of the air makes it difficult to transmit sound. Therefore, the screw processed the rotor sound to be easy to understand by separating the frequency around 84Hz. If you listen carefully, you can hear the faint rotor sound of Ingenuity flying around the screen.

In the beginning, NASA didn’t expect too much about the recording of the Ingenuity sound. However, with this recording, it is expected that this sound will serve as information for understanding Mars’ atmosphere. Related information can be found here.