HomeAstronomy & SpaceNASA's Mars Helicopter scout’s ridgeline for Perseverance science team

NASA’s Mars Helicopter scout’s ridgeline for Perseverance science team

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently surveyed an intriguing ridgeline near the ancient river delta in Jezero Crater. The images were captured during the tiny helicopter’s 27th flight. They were taken at the request of the Perseverance Mars rover science team.

Ingenuity not only provides imagery from an aerial perspective but allows our team to be two places at once on Mars. Sending the rover to survey and prospect in one location while launching the helicopter to survey another hundred of meters away is a great time-saver. It can also help us explore areas the rover will never visit.

The ridgeline is called “Fortun Ridge” after a parish in Norway. It is a geologic feature of interest because data collected from orbit, and at a distance by Perseverance which indicates it is the boundary between the two major rock units on the crater floor.

Previous images suggest tilted layers of rock in this area of Mars are uncommon. The science team will also have an opportunity to compare the Flight 27 images of this feature with data collected by both Ingenuity and Perseverance of an angled ridgeline nicknamed “Artuby” in the “South Séítah” region of the crater. Comparing Ingenuity’s shots of the two angled ridgelines may help team scientists better understand the history of the crater floor. The forces that were at play in this part of Jezero Crater billions of years ago.

This recent science-oriented foray by Ingenuity follows scouting the helicopter performed to view the backshell and parachute that helped the Perseverance rover safely land on Mars with Ingenuity attached to its belly. Those images have the potential to help ensure safer landings for future spacecraft such as the Mars Sample Return Lander. It is part of a multi-mission campaign that would bring Perseverance’s samples of Martian rocks.

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