Perseverance captures video of ingenuity flight for the first time. It is the Perseverance Mars rover of NASA that recorded sounds and captured videos. The ingenuity helicopter made its fourth flight on Mars on April 30th, 2021. Perseverance captures video and audio, with the help of its two microphones. The perseverance has a Mastcam-Z imager and a SuperCam laser instrument, which has a laser instrument. So, these two instruments captured the audio sounds and also the videos to produce combined footage. The laser of this rover zaps the rocks and studies their composition with the help of a spectrometer. Now, the Perseverance captures video only from a distance of 80 meters from the helicopter’s take-off point.
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Perseverance captures video of ingenuity flight-Creates history
The event is a first of its kind and has created history. David Mimoun is a professor of planetary science at the Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO) in Toulouse, France, and is a lead for the SuperCam Mars. He quotes, “We had carried out tests and simulations that told us the microphone would barely pick up the sounds of the helicopter. And the Mars atmosphere damps the sound propagation strongly. We have been lucky to register the helicopter at such a distance. This recording will be a gold mine for our understanding of the Martian atmosphere.” The scientists have recorded the audio in mono so that it is easily audible. So, they isolated the 84-hertz helicopter blade sound and reduced the frequencies below 80 hertz and above 90 hertz. They also raised the volume of the remaining signal.
The Doppler Effect:
The team also said that additional information such as the Doppler Effect will help confirm details of the flight. Now, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico developed the body unit of the SuperCam. And the other units include spectrometers, control electronics, and also software. All of these in conjunction have recorded these sounds for the first time to create a history.
