Ingenuity Tasked with Photo Mission Over Perseverance Rover Reentry Equipment

NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter has completed yet another surprising mission, this time surveying the remains of the Perseverance Rover's jettisoned armor on the Martian surface. 

Ingenuity was tasked with the survey job by the Mars Sample Return program, curious about the status of the rover's conical backshell that was detached during its decent from orbit in February of 2021. The end result granted the program with 10 aerial images - color, no less - taken during Flight 26. The lessons learned from analysis on the pieces should yield improvements in future design, as engineers glimpse a rare opportunity to assess which pieces remain after the traumatic process of reentry. For the multi-stage missions required to bring back Perseverence's payload of sediment and rocks, NASA will take all the data it can to ensure survivability. 

“NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Every time we’re airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve. Mars Sample Return’s reconnaissance request is a perfect example of the utility of aerial platforms on Mars.”

“Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” said JPL’s Ian Clark, former Perseverance systems engineer and now Mars Sample Return ascent phase lead. “But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point. If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.”

The Mars Helicopter program has continued to surprise command, soldiering on long after its expected end of service, making short flights from point to point to obtain close-in aerial photography impossible to obtain any other way. For now, Ingenuity remains, awaiting further orders. 

FMI: www.nasa.gov