NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently took off on its 45th flight, covering nearly a third of a mile (0.5 kilometer) and capturing a stunning image of the sun setting over the Red Planet.
cleverness It still makes short trips around Mars’ Jezero crater, and continues to collect data beyond its operational lifetime. Ingenuity has reached the Red Planet aboard NASA Rover Perseverancewhich landed on Jezero soil in February 2021.
The Creation flew for the first time two months later, in April 2021, and was initially tasked with only a few test flights to prove its groundbreaking technology. However, after exceeding NASA’s expectations, the Ingenuity mission has expanded to serve as the Perseverance Explorer, which is searching for ancient signs. Mars life and collect samples for future return to Earth. Creativity has now flown a total of 46 times, with a cumulative distance of 6.3 miles (10.1 km).
Related: Mars probe Perseverance discovers a dexterous helicopter resting on a sand dune (pictured)
Flights 45 and 46 were only three days apart, on February 22 and 25, with Flight 47 scheduled on either day. According to the relative positions of the earth and MarsA transmission between the two planets can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to reach its destination. For this reason, Ingenuity is designed to take off, fly and land on its own. Mission controllers schedule each flight, then have to wait for data confirmation that Ingenuity has landed safely. Onboard cameras take pictures that are used to help determine the next steps for Creativity and Perseverance.
Ingenuity’s high-resolution color camera is tilted 22 degrees below the horizon. The images sent to NASA by a 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) helicopter focused mostly on Earth, looking for interesting geological features and potential obstacles ahead.
But occasionally, a small sliver of the Martian sky will appear in one of Ingenuity’s images, a reminder that the rotorcraft is giving us a whole new perspective on the Red Planet. Helicopter took just such a photo on its 45th flight, but with a rare target in the frame – the sun.
The image shows the sun hanging slightly above the horizon of distant hilltops, and was taken on Ingenuity’s Sol 714th, or Day 1. The bright rays in the image help illuminate the bizarre mountainous landscape of sand and rock inside Jezero Crater, and it looks almost like a photo you might take of a desert here. Land. Therein lies its beauty.
These perceived similarities form the basis of our exploration of space in the first place. The fact that an image of a sunset from a different planet can remind us so much of our own highlights the thin margin between the Earth that supports our life and the other lifeless worlds that orbit our sun and beyond. It symbolizes the nature of Perserverance’s search for ancient Martian life, and begs the question of what sunsets on other worlds might look like — and whether humanity will be able to see them, too.
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