How does "The first robotic servicing mission on the surface of Mars" sound to y'all?
Well, if you're #NASA#JPL, this awesome headline could be yours for the low cost of a few nitrogen puffs!
This thread is just me fantasizing how Perseverance could potentially use its gDRT to clean the dusty solar panel and camera lens on Ingenuity and make history with this extraordinary servicing operation! 🧵
The Perseverance rover captured this scenic panorama a week ago on the afternoon of Sol 999 with the left Navigation camera.
In front of the rover lies Neretva Vallis and the Jezero Crater Rim where the mission is heading to in the future.
Yesterday the Perseverance rover made a new abrasion at a rock named Mount Meeker. You can see the abrasion bit carve away on the rock and even what seems like dust being kicked up by it.
Out of many boring news stories eulogizing or lamenting #Ingenuity, here is a fascinating piece by Eric Berger about how the #MarsHelicopter came to be.
It's always the visionary people who in spite of difficulties persevere and make those great leaps forward. And those visionaries include many non technical roles like managers, administrators, and indeed, politicians.
It may be a little dated, but nonetheless it's nice to see the #MarsHelicopter marching ahead.
This is an image #Ingenuity captured on its last #Flight52 that just came down from the Red Planet. On the upper side is the terrain the heli will have to cross soon, when it takes off for its 53rd flight.
Our favorite Mars Helicopter had its picture taken today!
Ingenuity has now flown an astonishing distance of 12 kilometers in 95 minutes distributed over 53 flights (of just 5 that were originally planned)!
This image was taken by the left Mastcam-Z on Perseverance at a distance of just about 16 meters - the closest these two robots have come since early in the mission!
The passage of time on Mars. On Sol-945 (Oct. 17, 2023) starting at 10:21 LMST in the morning, Ingenuity kicked off an imaging sequence with its RTE color camera while sitting idle at airfield Tau. The camera snapped a picture of the ground every five minutes and forty seconds for nearly two hours and twenty-six minutes. Note; The last frame in the GIF, the animation reverses playback. #Ingenuity#MarsHelicopter#JPL#Mars2020#NASA#Mars#Space#PerseveranceRover
What is proper to say for #Ingenuity, an anthropomorphism but nonetheless an expression of love, is that it stayed in the battlefield erect and functioning until the very end.
The #MarsHelicopter is still alive, and we'll probably be hearing about it for as long as it has power to transmit its beacon and #NASA continues to devote a few minutes of #Perseverance's time every sol to listening for it, which may be well into Martian autumn.
Today Perseverance made a new abrasion at a rock called Ypsilon Lake. The rover previously gave it a good dust-off with the GDRT, which cleans the surface with a blast of nitrogen and checked it out with the WATSON camera.
Overcast skies above Jezero Crater. These enhanced images taken on Sol-965 (November 7, 2023) attempt to highlight some of the detail in the clouds, at the same time giving an 'erie' and 'stormy' look to them. This is more of an artistic stance at processing these images. Shortly after these images were taken, Perseverance looked upwards to spy a 22 degree halo overhead. #JPL#Mars2020#NASA#Mars#Space#PerseveranceRover
"[...] the helicopter executed the first half of its autonomous journey, flying north at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) for 466 feet (142 meters). Then a flight-contingency program was triggered, and Ingenuity automatically landed." #LAND_NOW
This first image from #Flight71 let's us know that #Ingenuity ended up landed on its feet, but if one looks closer, there is a groove on the regolith that looks very fresh. It seems as if something hit the ground in a way never seen before.
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Processed, undistorted HELI_NAV
Image captured from RMC 71.0001/26
Sol 1027, LMST: 10:11:02