Photo: NASA/JPL
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been bombarded with news about the exciting things going on over on Mars. Two machines, the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter, are up there, changing the world as we know it and space exploration as we do it.
With the exception of Perseverance generating a small amount of oxygen on the Red Planet, all other news involved the Ingenuity helicopter in some way or another. After all, it’s not every day that we humans get to fly such a machine on a planet millions of miles away.
Today’s novelty also includes Ingenuity to some degree, even if the star of this piece should be Perseverance.
You’re looking at a color shot of the surface of Mars taken by Ingenuity during its third flight on April 25. That would be the one when the tiny machine traveled the greatest distance over the planet, 164 feet (50 meters), but also achieved a speed greater than anything it was capable of during testing on Earth, 4.5 mph (7.2 kph).
Busy as it was doing all this, the helicopter had enough time to snap some photos of its surroundings. In one of them, published on April 28 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), we get a shift of perspective.
Whereas up until now, we were used to seeing Ingenuity from Perseverance’s point of view, this time is the other way around. As it focused the camera on getting the shots of the surface, the helicopter caught a glimpse of the rover. We won’t tell you where it is, so be ready to spend a few seconds locating it.
According to JPL, this image of the rover was taken from an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) and a distance of 279 feet (85 meters).
Like all the other things these two machines are doing on Mars, this is a first, too. Sure, Mars rovers have been known to take selfies, but never in the history of our world did one of them get its photo taken by some other machine in close proximity.
Today’s novelty also includes Ingenuity to some degree, even if the star of this piece should be Perseverance.
You’re looking at a color shot of the surface of Mars taken by Ingenuity during its third flight on April 25. That would be the one when the tiny machine traveled the greatest distance over the planet, 164 feet (50 meters), but also achieved a speed greater than anything it was capable of during testing on Earth, 4.5 mph (7.2 kph).
Busy as it was doing all this, the helicopter had enough time to snap some photos of its surroundings. In one of them, published on April 28 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), we get a shift of perspective.
Whereas up until now, we were used to seeing Ingenuity from Perseverance’s point of view, this time is the other way around. As it focused the camera on getting the shots of the surface, the helicopter caught a glimpse of the rover. We won’t tell you where it is, so be ready to spend a few seconds locating it.
According to JPL, this image of the rover was taken from an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) and a distance of 279 feet (85 meters).
Like all the other things these two machines are doing on Mars, this is a first, too. Sure, Mars rovers have been known to take selfies, but never in the history of our world did one of them get its photo taken by some other machine in close proximity.
I spy with my little eye…a rover.????
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 28, 2021
See if you can spot @NASAPersevere in this image taken by the #MarsHelicopter during its third flight on April 25, 2021. Ingenuity was flying at an altitude of 16 ft (5 m) and ~279 ft (~85 m) from the rover at the time. https://t.co/TNCdXWcKWE pic.twitter.com/krf1jBs3cY
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