Take a close look at the Martian desert
Ingenuity, NASA's extraterrestrial helicopter, flew 40 feet into Martian air and captured an incredible landscape on another planet.
The experimental craft, with rotors four feet long from tip to tip, rose atop a hill just beyond the rim of Belva crater on its 51st flight. The newly released view (opens in a new tab) is magnificent. It appears, dare I say, earthly. In the foreground is a rocky desert. The horizon is dotted with eroded, windswept hills. The sky is clear.
And scattered throughout the landscape are some odd signs of human exploration.
Spot the Spacecraft – a little challenge for you, in two levels of difficulty:
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) April 25, 2023
The #MarsHelicopter and I have been closer together lately, allowing us to snap pics of each other for the first time in a while. Can you find me in one of these images, and Ingenuity in the other? 🔍 pic.twitter.com/WDlGyA9TIH
They are as follows:
Helicopter legs: The ends of two of the spacecraft's legs can be seen on the right and left sides of Ingenuity's image as it hovers in the air.
Ingenuity's small shadow on the ground can be seen at center-right, just to the right of a small grey rock.
The Perseverance rover: Perhaps most notable is NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed alongside Ingenuity in February 2021 with the primary goal of searching for potential evidence of past microbial life on Mars — if any ever existed. Near the top left is a car-sized, six-wheeled rover.
Rover tracks: The large robot's trail can also be seen. Follow two horizontal lines running to the right across the image from Perseverance. Because the wheels are metallic, they make a lot of noise as they rumble across Mars' rocky terrain.
Trash! : Debris such as wires and insulation were scattered throughout the desert as the rover and its landing gear plummeted through the Martian atmosphere before a series of difficult landing manoeuvres. Just below the rover, NASA has identified a "small piece of debris."
All of Ingenuity's grand aerial views are a pleasant surprise. The mission planners hoped to get five flights out of the small chopper. It has now surpassed 50, with many more planned.
The experimental Mars explorer is currently flying over more difficult terrain, including "dunes, boulders, and rocks, and surrounded by hills that could have us for lunch," NASA's Ingenuity operations lead Josh Anderson explained(opens in a new tab) a few weeks ago.
Stay tuned as Ingenuity and Perseverance delve deeper into Mars' Jezero Crater, a land that was once teeming with flowing water(opens in a new tab) and muddy deltas but is now arid desert.
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