Perseverance, NASA`s most sophisticated rover, is celebrating 100 Martian days (sols) since it landed on the Red Planet, where it is collecting soil samples and all sorts of data in its pursuit for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover touched down on the 18th of February and immediately started sending spectacular images from Mars.
Perseverance also brought a friend to keep him company during the Martian adventure. Ingenuity, a small helicopter, is now famous after making history in April by completing the first powered, controlled flight ever made on another planet. The 1,8 kg helicopter can be used as a “pathfinder” for inaccessible areas. Ingenuity joined forces with Perseverance and managed to send some neat aerial images from Mars.
Here are some of the images collected so far by Perseverance and Ingenuity, during their mission on Mars.
GIF from March (the 22nd and 24th Martian days, or sols) showing doors opening and closing on parts of the Sample Caching System aboard the rover.
This photo by Perseverance reveals a spectacular view of Santa Cruz hill situated inside Mars’ Jezero Crater (the crater’s rim can be observed beyond the hill, on the horizon line). The rover used its dual-camera Mastcam-Z imager while being 2,5 kilometers away from the hill.
Images showing step by step the deployment of Ingenuity from Perseverance`s belly.
Perseverance took a selfie with his buddy – the Ingenuity helicopter, using the WATSON camera (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) on the SHERLOC instrument (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), located on the rover’s long robotic arm.
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made history on April 19, 2021, after completing an experimental flight on Mars. Perseverance witnessed the event and shot this image using his left Navigation Camera. Ingenuity is “the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet”, announced NASA. It`s considered a major achievement because the atmosphere on Mars is very thin, which made the flight a huge challenge for the engineers.
Video shot by Perseverance`s Mastcam-Z instrument showing the blades making a wiggle test before the flight. Ingenuitys blades can rotate at roughly 2.400 rpm.
This image shows a rock baptized “Máaz” (the Navajo word for “Mars”), considered “the first feature of scientific interest to be studied by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover”.
A close-up view of the rock Máaz shot by Perseverance SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI).
The first color image of Mars captured by an aerial vehicle while aloft belongs to Ingenuity. At that moment, the helicopter was flying at 5,2 meters from the surface. The photo shows Perseverance`s tracks on Mars.
Perseverance is a six-wheeled, car-sized rover weighing over a tone. Thousands of people from around the world worked on this “epic” project, for eight years.
The 2,7 billion $ rover has the most cameras (20MP resolution) ever sent to Mars. Also, for the first time, we can hear sounds from the Red Planet, because Perseverance is fitted with two microphones.
Perseverance follows the footsteps of Curiosity and Opportunity Mars missions, which suggested the planet might have supported life, billions of years ago. Scientists hope the Perseverance mission will find evidence to confirm this theory. The Perseverance mission is supposed to operate on Mars for two Earth years.
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