To the delight of social media users, NASA’s Perseverance rover used a camera at the end of its robotic arm to take a selfie with the Mars Ingenuity helicopter this week ahead of its historic flight mission.
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At about 6 meters apart from the photos taken on April 6, 2021 or the 48th March day of the mission, the Rover has its WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering) camera on the SHERLOC (Scanning of habitable environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took a selfie with the Ingenuity helicopter, which is seen here about 3.9 meters from the rover. This photo was taken by the WASTON camera on the robotic arm of the Rover on April 6, 2021, the 46th March day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
In a release, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said Wednesday that the selfie was built using 62 individual images – taken in sequence – stitched together.
It noted that the Curiosity Mars rover, which landed on the red planet in 2011, takes similar ‘selfies’.
Ingenuity, released on the Martian surface, is scheduled to embark on the first powered and controlled flight of an airplane on another planet ever on April 11th.
Once the team is ready at JPL, Perseverance will, according to NASA, pass on the helicopter’s final flight instruction from mission controllers.
If all final controls and atmospheric conditions look good, the helicopter will climb at 3 feet per second and soar up to 30 feet above the surface.
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After downloading data and possibly images from the navigator cameras and Mastcam-Z from the rover, the Ingenuity team will determine if the flight was a success.
The results will be discussed by the team on the same day during a media conference.