Gear that helped Perseverance Land Rover scooter by NASA’s Mars helicopter

New Delhi, Apr 28: NASA's ingenuity Mars helicopters recently surveyed both the parachute that helped the agency's Perseverance rover land on Mars and the cone-shaped backshell that protected the rover in deep space and during its fiery descent toward the Martian surface on Feb. 18, 2021, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.

"NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity's team lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Every time we're airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve. Mars Sample Return's reconnaissance request is a perfect example of the utility of aerial platforms on Mars," the report on read.

"Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown," said JPL's Ian Clark, former Perseverance systems engineer and now Mars Sample Return ascent phase lead. "But Ingenuity's images offer a different vantage point. If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring," the report also said.

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