The small helicopter aboard NASA Perseverance got his first look at the Red Planet.
The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter, a technology demonstration called ingenuity, to Mars linked to Perseverance’s belly. Over the weekend, Perseverance dropped the rubble shield that protected the ingenuity during the epicenter on Feb. 18 on the floor of the Jezero crater.
The move helps pave the way for Ingenuity’s test flights that could take place as soon as the first week of April.
‘Gone is the rubble shield, and here’s our first look at the helicopter. It’s stored sideways, folded and locked in place, so an inverted origami has to be done before I can put it down. First I’ll get the designated one first.’ helipad ‘, a few days’ drive from here, “NASA officials wrote on Sunday (March 21). via Rover’s official Twitter account.
Related: NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Explained
We will learn more about the helicopter flight and the rest of Ingenuity’s flight plan tomorrow (March 23) at 13:30 EDT (1730 GMT). You can watch the event live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency.
No rotorcraft has ever flown in a world beyond the earth. NASA hopes that ingenuity will change that, and in a big way: successful results by the bantam helicopter can open Mars for extensive aerial reconnaissance in the future, NASA officials said.
After completing the few flights of Ingenuity, Perseverance will begin to seriously focus on its main tasks: hunting for signs of antiquity Mars life and the collection of samples for future return to Earth. The 25-kilometer-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero is an excellent place to do such work, members of the mission team said. Observations by Mars orbits show that the crater presented a large, deep lake and a river delta billions of years ago.
Ingenuity is one of two technology demonstrations aboard Perseverance. The other, a tool called MOXIE (“Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment”), is designed to generate oxygen from the thin, carbon dioxide-dominated Mars atmosphere. Scaled-up versions of MOXIE could one day help humanity set up shop on the Red Planet, NASA officials said.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.