Perseverance

2021

NASA posts 3D video of Ingenuity flight on Mars

In mid-May 2021, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) published a 3D video of the third flight of the Ingenuity helicopter above the surface of Mars. The flight itself took place on April 25, 2021.

The historical moment was captured using several cameras attached to the mast of the Perseverance rover, with which Ingenuity was delivered to Mars. The 3D flight was visualized by NASA engineers under the direction of Justin Maki, an imaging specialist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Maki began to create 3D images of Mars while still a graduate student, among his works are images from NASA's Sojourner, the first rover in 1997.

NASA shows 3D video of helicopter flight on Mars

To create 3D video, engineers added the images to a video, and then re-projected the frames to provide stereo viewing by overlaying two images taken at different angles. If you view the generated video using glasses with lenses of different colors, you can observe a stereoscopic 3D effect.

Watching this event is like standing on the surface of Mars next to Perseverance and watching the flight with your own eyes, "NASA noted.

The flight of a helicopter to Mars opens a new era for exploring Mars. This is a great demonstration of new technology for intelligence. Helicopter video is the most extensive 3D video from the Mastcam-Z team. With each flight, we have more and more opportunities, "said Justin Maki.

Ingenuity's main tasks are to demonstrate technology and carry out the first flights on the Red Planet. After the first successful launches of Ingenuity, NASA decided to expand its mission and test the helicopter for reconnaissance and escort of the rover.^[1]

The American Perseverance probe landed on Mars

On February 18, 2021, the largest and most technically complex probe of all that NASA has ever sent to Mars - Perseverance, made a successful landing on Mars.

It became the ninth spacecraft to descend to the surface of the Red Planet and is part of NASA's first mission to search for signs of ancient life on Mars. It was launched in July 2020.

For the first time in history, a specially designed Martian helicopter was sent with it.

The rover landed at the bottom of a dried-up ancient lake, where American scientists plan to search for possible traces of life on Mars^[2].

Perseverance, which is the most advanced astrobiological laboratory ever launched into space, landed in the huge rocky basin of the Jezero Crater, on the edge of the delta of the Martian River, which dried up billions of years ago.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Engine Laboratory, located near Los Angeles, received confirmation of the landing of the rover and the first images around 20:55 GMT. Information was transmitted to Earth from one of several satellites already in Martian orbit.

The main goal of the $2.7 billion Perseverance project is to search for ancient microbes and other signs of biological life that may have existed on Mars about 3 billion years ago.

The descent of the device was the riskiest stage of the seven-month journey of the Perseverance rover at a distance of 472 million km from Earth. A multistage spacecraft that delivered a rover to the surface of the Red Planet struck the Martian atmosphere at a speed of 19,000 km per hour.

Immediately after that, Perseverance quickly performed a complex series of independent maneuvers to slow down the descent by opening a supersonic parachute and smoothly landing on all six wheels using a special device - a celestial crane.

First picture taken by Perseverance on the surface of Mars

The SUV-sized rover weighs 1 ton and is equipped with a robotic mechanical manipulator two meters long, equipped with 19 cameras, two microphones and a whole set of tools necessary for the goals. Perseverance mission will last several years. The rover will try to collect 30 samples of rocks and soil and pack them in test tubes that will be sent to Earth for laboratory analysis in the 2030s.

Perseverance was the fifth rover to land on the Red Planet. All rover launch missions, the first of which took place in 1997, were carried out by NASA. However, after some time, the first Chinese rover aboard the Tianwen-1 spacecraft may descend to the surface of the planet. On February 11, it became known that Tianwen-1 entered the orbit of Mars. If everything goes according to plan, in a few months China will become the second country to make such an expedition.

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