Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter acquired this image using its navigation camera. This camera is mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight. This image was acquired on Aug. 20, 2022 (Sol 533 of the Perseverance rover mission).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter appears to have gone airborne on its 30^th sortie. Flying on August 20^th, the craft took a set of navigation camera images.

In a pre-flight posting, Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity Team Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the 30^th flight would be a short hop. The intent of the flight would be to “check out our system’s health after surviving 101 sols of winter, collect landing delivery data in support of NASA’s Mars Sample Return Campaign, and potentially clear off dust that has settled on our solar panel since Flight 29.” That sortie took place on June 11, 2022.

Translate sideways

Tzanetos said that flight 30 would have Ingenuity translate sideways only 7 feet (2 meters) and then land, “but with the specific goal of providing a data point on Ingenuity’s ability to accurately approach a landing target.”

The rotorcraft’s navigation system’s performance “will be of value to the Sample Recovery Helicopter team (part of the Mars Sample Return Program) in their early design work for a next-generation Mars Helicopter navigation system, Tzanetos said.

Illustration of Ingenuity helicopter.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech