NASA's Ingenuity drone is about to take on its greatest challenge yet — flying over the hills that surround their exploration location on Mars.
It was a straight-up-and-down manoeuvre to an altitude of only 3m, but it proved the principle.Not bad for what was supposed to be just a short technology demonstration. But the opportunities a scout helicopter affords were simply too good for Nasa to pass up.The drone now supports Perseverance by examining the road ahead, helping the wheeled robot and its "backseat drivers" on Earth pick the right path.
It's also doing science, taking airborne pictures of rock outcrops from multiple angles so researchers can build 3D models of interesting targets for further investigation. But the future is about to get a lot harder. As soon as Perseverance has dropped some rock samples on the ground for later collection and return to Earth by missions at the end of the decade, the rover will head for high ground. And Ingenuity will tag along.The pair will climb the 40m-high deposits of an ancient river delta feature, and then make towards the rim of Jezero Crater.
The newly installed software will allow the chopper to make the necessary navigation corrections when the ground in front of it rises.Engineers back on Earth currently analyse satellite imagery to find safe sites to touch down. "But it's harder to correlate orbital imagery to small rocks on the ground in the hills.
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