Space Helicopter - Ingenuity en stor suksess - NASA

 

Mars helicopter Ingenuity spotted a 'heart' in Perseverance rover's tracks on 9th flight (video)

By Mike Wall about 9 hours ago

 
 
 
 
 
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NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this image, which features tracks made by the Perseverance rover, using its high-resolution color camera during its ninth Red Planet flight, on July 5, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Is there something going on between Perseverance and the Mars helicopter Ingenuity?

During its latest Red Planet flight on Monday (July 5), NASA's 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity Mars helicopter photographed a heart-shaped feature among the tracks made by the six-wheeled Perseverance rover. 

The "heart" shows where the Perseverance rover took a slight detour, perhaps to investigate some interesting rock or patch of dirt, before returning to its original path and heading on its way. Or, if your inclinations run in a less literal, less factual direction, the ground-bound robot was sending a message of support (or more) to its aerial partner.

The car-sized Perseverance rover landed, with Ingenuity attached to its belly, this past February on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater, which harbored a big lake and a river delta in the ancient past. In early April, the little chopper deployed onto the red dirt, kicking off a month-long, five-flight campaign designed to show that aerial exploration is feasible on the Red Planet.

Ingenuity aced that original technology-demonstrating mission and was rewarded with an extension, which aims to showcase the scouting potential of Mars rotorcraft. For example, the Perseverance team is looking forward to studying the photos Ingenuity captured on Sunday's sortie, which flew over a rugged region called "Séítah," the helicopter's handlers said.

"Captured in those images are rock outcrops that show contacts between the major geologic units on Jezero Crater's floor," Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip and Perseverance deputy project scientist Ken Williford wrote in a Flight 9 update on Wednesday (July 7).  

"They also include a system of fractures the Perseverance team calls 'Raised Ridges,' which the rover's scientists hope to visit in part to investigate whether an ancient subsurface habitat might be preserved there," wrote Grip and Williford, both of whom are based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.