Ingenuity performed so well during that initial phase that it got a mission extension and is now doing scouting work for Perseverance. A few months later, the helicopter embarked on a five-flight demonstration mission designed to show that aerial exploration is feasible on the Red Planet. Ingenuity and Perseverance landed together on Jezero's floor in February. Mars helicopter spots its Perseverance rover from above in an epic view (video) Ingenuity spots Perseverance rover from the air (photo) - Ingenuity spotted a 'heart' in Perseverance rover's tracks on 9th flight (video)
#New little big planet how to#
It's awesome to actually get to see this occur, and it reinforces the accuracy of our modeling and our understanding of how to best operate Ingenuity." "Our flight simulations indicated that this little 'breather' would help the helicopter keep track of its heading in spite of the significant terrain variations. "Since the helicopter's navigation filter prefers flat terrain, we programmed in a waypoint near the ridgeline, where the helicopter slows down and hovers for a moment," Grip added. (JPL manages the missions of both Ingenuity and Perseverance.) "We took off from the crater floor and flew over an elevated ridgeline before dipping into Séítah," said Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip, also of JPL, said in the same statement. 18), reveal how complicated flight number 13 was and show how deftly Ingenuity dealt with the changing terrain beneath its blades, helicopter team members said. The videos, which JPL released on Thursday (Nov. "And while the helicopter is little more than a speck in the wide view taken through the 'left eye,' it gives viewers a good feel for the size of the environment that Ingenuity is exploring."
"Even at 300 meters away, we get a magnificent closeup of takeoff and landing through Mastcam-Z's 'right eye,'" Maki said. "The value of Mastcam-Z really shines through with these video clips," Justin Maki, Mastcam-Z deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in a statement.