MARS (The fourth planet from the Sun) – NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently captured images of the gear that helped the Perseverance rover land on Mars.
The images show the parachute that helped the rover land and the cone-shaped backshell that protected the rover in deep space and during its descent. Perseverance landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021.
“NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s team lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Every time we’re airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve. Mars Sample Return’s reconnaissance request is a perfect example of the utility of aerial platforms on Mars.”
NASA believes the images can help ensure safer landings for future spacecraft. One of those future spacecraft journeys could be the Mars Sample Return Lander, which is part of a multimission campaign that would bring Perseverance’s samples of Martian rocks, atmosphere, and sediment back to Earth for detailed analysis.
“Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” said JPL’s Ian Clark, former Perseverance systems engineer and now Mars Sample Return ascent phase lead. “But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point. If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.”
Want to learn more? Click here to read more about these images from NASA.