Skip to main content

How NASA’s Mars helicopter is already helping out Perseverance rover

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has performed so well during its test flights on Mars that the space agency has now put the aircraft to work.

Color images captured by its onboard camera during its ninth and most recent flight earlier this month are being used by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is overseeing the Mars mission, to map out a safe route for the Perseverance rover and help pinpoint new areas of interest for the rover to explore.

Recommended Videos

In another first, aerial images taken by #MarsHelicopter helped scout an area of interest for the @NASAPersevere science team and revealed obstacles the rover may need to drive around as it explores Jezero Crater. https://t.co/R0EqMTVRq0 pic.twitter.com/4FSAGAYNjw

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) July 13, 2021

After proving that the autonomous drone-like aircraft can handle Mars’ extremely thin atmosphere following its historic maiden flight in April, JPL talked much about using future versions of Ingenuity to assist planetary rovers during their explorations.

But Ingenuity’s increasingly complex trial flights over the last three months have gone so well that the mission team has decided to jump ahead and put the current helicopter to work.

Up to now, Mars rovers have had to use their own cameras to check the way ahead. But this can be a slow process as the vehicle edges forward, carefully detecting and avoiding obstacles such as boulders, sudden dips, and sand dunes.

The mission team can also utilize data gathered by the HiRISE (the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but it’s so far from the red planet’s surface that it can only reliably identify rocks at least one meter in diameter.

Being able to use imagery from a camera-equipped helicopter flying just a few meters off the ground is a real boon, giving the team a clearer understanding of the terrain and allowing it to use the data to confidently send its rover to its next destination, at a faster speed than before.

It’s certainly great to see Ingenuity contributing in a meaningful way to the current rover mission after emerging from its test phase so quickly.

“The helicopter is an extremely valuable asset for rover planning because it provides high-resolution imagery of the terrain we want to drive through,” said JPL’s Oliver Toupet. “We can better assess the size of the dunes and where bedrock is poking out. That’s great information for us; it helps identify which areas may be traversable by the rover and whether certain high-value science targets are reachable.”

JPL is using Perseverance to explore Mars’ Jezero Crater. Given that the area was once filled with water, the team believes there’s a good chance it will contain evidence of ancient life. To find out for certain, the rover will drill samples of material from beneath the planet’s surface that will later be returned to Earth for in-depth analysis.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA’s axed moon rover could be resurrected by Intuitive Machines
An illustration of NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) on the lunar surface.

Lunar scientists were shocked and dismayed last month when NASA announced that it was canceling work on its moon rover, VIPER. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover was intended to search the moon's south pole for evidence of water there, but NASA said that it had to ax the project due to increasing costs.

This week, an open letter to Congress called the cancellation of the mission "unprecedented and indefensible," and questioned NASA's assertion that the cancellation of the mission would not affect plans to send humans to the moon. Scientists argued that the mission was fundamental to understanding the presence of water on the moon, which is a key resource for human exploration, as well as an issue of scientific interest.

Read more
Relive Mars rover’s ‘7 minutes of terror’ during landing 12 years ago
An animation showing the Curiosity spacecraft heading toward Mars.

At 1:31 a.m. ET on August 6, 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover made a spectacular landing on the surface of Mars.

To mark the 12th anniversary, NASA has shared a video (below) in which members of the Curiosity team talk about how they achieved the remarkable feat, paying particular attention to the so-called “seven minutes of terror” during the final moments of descent.

Read more
Perseverance rover finds tantalizing hints of possible ancient life on Mars
mars 2020 perseverance rover

NASA's Perseverance rover was sent to Mars with one big, ambitious aim: to see if life could ever have thrived on our neighboring planet. Although there's unlikely to be anything alive on Mars now, the planet was once similar to Earth, with a thicker atmosphere and plentiful water on its surface. And during this time, billions of years ago, microbial life could have survived there. Now, Perseverance has located some tantalizing indications of possible microbial life -- although it's too early for scientists to be sure.

The rover has been taking samples by drilling into the martian rock as it travels, and it's a recent sample from an area called the Cheyava Falls that has ignited interest. The rock, collected on July 21, has indications of chemical signatures and physical structures that could potentially have been formed by life, such as the presence of organic compounds. These carbon-based molecules are the building blocks of life; however, they can also be formed by other processes.

Read more