The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite has just captured in a series of images a photo of the Ingenuity drone / helicopter, as well as, in another image, the rover Perseverance. The front page image of this article shows, at the location of the arrow, a few darker pixels which are in reality, according to NASA, the famous little drone seen from the sky at an altitude of around 290 km.
Ingenuity is in itself a real technical feat. Despite the thinness of the Martian atmosphere, this small helicopter made up of a counter-rotating double rotor, manages to fly above the red planet and carry out its optical terrain reconnaissance mission – autonomously and over distances up to unmatched here.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter immortalized Ingenuity and Perseverance from 200m away
Ingenuity is the first device of its kind: humanity has never managed to fly such a machine on a planet other than Earth. Its mission is above all to test the technology that will be a prelude to other small autonomous helicopters with increased range (up to 2 km for a flight time of around 4 minutes).
Ingenuity has already completed 23 flights since docking on February 18, 2021. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter also took this other image in which we can see the rover which dropped the drone on Martian soil before continuing its scientific mission:
© Nasa / The Sun
The rover arrived on the red planet near the Jezero crater around which there are traces of water flow that probably date back several billion years. The area even contained a permanent lake with traces of rivers as well as deltas. Perseverance is noticeably more visible in the image than the helicopter (which mostly looks like a few darker pixels).
And for good reason: we are talking about a much larger machine with a weight of around one tonne. The rover is equipped with a set of instruments (cameras, spectrometers of different types) whose objective is to identify the most interesting sites, provide the context of the sampling carried out (geological characteristics, climatic conditions at the formation) and carry out a first chemical analysis via the on-board spectrometers.
The robot also has a sophisticated system for taking cores from the ground. If you’re wondering how NASA manages to assure us that these little pixel patties are indeed Ingenuity and Perseverance, you’re not alone. In fact these images were shared by the HiRISE team formed by NASA within the University of Arizona.
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“The 3m by 2.7m rover sits on a bed of fractured rock, a formation that mission scientists call the ‘Máaz formation’, believed to be of volcanic origin.”, explains one of the HiRISE researchers, Dr. Matthew Chojnacki. Which also tells us that the rover and the helicopter are currently separated by about 200 meters. Did you guess what these images showed before you even read the explanation? Share your opinion in the comments.