NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover had a ringside seat for the newest flight of its little exploration partner.
The agency’s Ingenuity helicopter took to the Martian skies for the 54th time on Aug. 3, performing a straightforward up-and-down hop that lasted just 24 seconds.
Perseverance was nearby on the time, and it recorded the sortie using its powerful Mastcam-Z camera system. The resulting video captures the flight in amazing detail, showing Ingenuity rise, hover and spin for a spell before coming back to rest on the red dirt of Mars’ Jezero Crater.
Related: Mars helicopter Ingenuity phones home, breaking 63-day silence
Ingenuity returned the photographic favor, by the way in which, capturing a picture of Perseverance throughout the temporary flight.
Perseverance and Ingenuity landed together contained in the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero in February 2021. The rover is looking for signs of past Mars life and collecting samples for future return to Earth. Ingenuity is aiding those quests by doing scouting work for the Perseverance team.
That wasn’t the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper’s original job; its primary mission was to point out that aerial exploration is feasible on Mars despite its thin atmosphere. Ingenuity aced that task with an initial five-flight campaign, then shifted to a more ambitious prolonged mission that now includes nearly 50 sorties.
Flight 54 was abnormally easy and short for Ingenuity, but there is a reason for that: The helicopter team desired to be sure that all was well with the chopper after Flight 53 got here to a premature end. The most recent hop went in line with plan, and Ingenuity’s handlers are confident it may keep flying for some time on Mars.
This wassn’t the primary time that Perseverance has recorded Ingenuity chickening out on the Red Planet. For instance, the massive rover captured video of the chopper in motion on March 9, during its forty seventh Martian flight.