The helicopter is providing scientists with information about Mars, reaching places the Perseverance rover cannot traverse
Space
8 March 2022
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured this image of the Ingenuity helicopter NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
NASA’s helicopter Ingenuity has taken more than 2200 photographs of Mars since arriving on the planet just over a year ago.
Ingenuity was designed to scout out potential routes for the six-wheeled Perseverance rover to travel across Mars’s 45-kilometre-wide Jezero crater, while it searches for signs of ancient microscopic life.
Ingenuity is fitted with two cameras, a 0.3-megapixel black-and-white navigational camera and a 13-megapixel colour camera that is similar to the average smartphone camera.
By its 18th flight …