A new video shared by NASA shows the tiny Ingenuity Mars helicopter in action, as captured by its rover buddy Perseverance. The rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture the chopper taking off, hovering, moving around, and landing in a sequence NASA described as “performing to near-perfection.”
The video was taken during the chopper’s 13th flight on September 4, and it is the most detailed footage ever captured of the chopper in the air. The thirteenth flight was particularly challenging as it required the chopper to pass over a range of terrain types in the Séítah region and move around an outcrop to photograph it from different angles from a height of 8 meters.
Capturing Ingenuity chopper in detail
“We took off from the crater floor and flew over an elevated ridgeline before dipping into Séítah,” said Ingenuity Chief Pilot Håvard Grip of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Since the helicopter’s navigation filter prefers flat terrain, we programmed in a waypoint near the ridgeline, where the helicopter slows down and hovers for a moment. Our flight simulations indicated that this little ‘breather’ would help the helicopter keep track of its heading in spite of the significant terrain variations. It does the same on the way back. It’s awesome to actually get to see this occur, and it reinforces the accuracy of our modeling and our understanding of how to best operate Ingenuity.”
Perseverance using its instruments
The rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument packs two cameras and it managed to capture footage of the chopper in action. One camera recorded the whole flight from a wide-angle, while the other captured close-up footage of the take-off and landing.
“The value of Mastcam-Z really shines through with these video clips,” said Justin Maki, deputy principal investigator for the Mastcam-Z instrument. “Even at 300 meters [328 yards] away, we get a magnificent closeup of takeoff and landing through Mastcam-Z’s ‘right eye.’ And while the helicopter is little more than a speck in the wide view taken through the ‘left eye,’ it gives viewers a good feel for the size of the environment that Ingenuity is exploring.”
