By 
July 2nd, 2023
Artwork of Ingenuity Mars helicopter.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has captured navigation camera images during the rotorcraft’s 52nd flight on April 26.
Images were taken by its navigation camera, mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight.
“Sixty-three days is a long time to wait for the results of a flight,” reports JPL’s copter central, “but the data coming in indicates all is well with the first aircraft on another world. If the remainder of Ingenuity’s health checks are equally rosy, the helicopter may fly again within the next couple of weeks.”
Targeted for Flight 53 is an interim airfield to the west, the JPL posting adds, “from which the team plans to perform another westward flight to a new base of operations near a rocky outcrop the Perseverance team is interested in exploring.”
Re-established contact
The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing.
Contact was re-established June 28 when the NASA Perseverance rover crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again.
The goal of Flight 52, a 1,191-foot (363-meter) and 139-second-long flight, was to reposition the helicopter and take images of the Martian surface for the rover’s science team.
This select set of images were acquired on April 27, 2023.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Posted in Space News
