What a shot! NASA’s Perseverance Rover records Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s complicated flight — watch video

NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter: NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has made a video of the 13th flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter sent by the agency. But what is unique about that? Well, this video of the flight gives the most detailed look so far of the helicopter in motion. The flight had taken place over two months ago on September 4, and now, the helicopter is scheduled to take its 16th flight, either on Saturday or later than that. However, there was something unique about the 13th flight of the Ingenuity Helicopter. The flight had lasted for a duration of 160.5 seconds, or 2 minutes and 40.5 seconds and it was among the most complicated ones for the rotorcraft. The flight attained the maximum height of 8 metres or 26 feet.

Perseverance Rover’s Mastcam-Z having two cameras recorded two clips of the helicopter’s Flight 13. The first one showed the majority of the profile of Ingenuity, while the second focused closely on the takeoff and landing of the rotorcraft. The second clip was captured as per the science observation which aims to help scientists measure the amount of dust plumes that the helicopter generates.



What’s even more impressive is the fact that Perseverance Rover captured the takeoff and landing with such detail even when it was 300 metres or 328 yards away from the site of the flight. This was captured using the ‘right eye’ of the Mastcam-Z, the US space agency said, while the ‘left eye’ captured the wide view of the flight in which the helicopter was merely a speck, giving an idea about the expansive region that the helicopter is aiming to explore.



A small dust plume was kicked off by Ingenuity when it took off, and then once it attained its maximum height, it performed a small pirouette so that it could line up its colour camera to scout the area. The helicopter can then be seen moving horizontally and going off screen, and then coming back in the view of the camera and landing close to where it initially took off. The landing spot was about 39 feet or 12 metres from where it had taken off. The right camera shows Ingenuity in a closer manner, while the wide view barely shows the helicopter, focusing more on the span of the Martian surface.

During its flight out of the view of Perseverance’s camera, Ingenuity collected as many as 10 images of the rocky surface of the red planet.