NASA’s unmanned helicopter Innovation took its second test flight on Thursday (April 22) and took its first color photo of the surface of Mars from 5.2 meters above. On Friday (April 23), NASA released the first Mars aerial color photos, the photos show the surface of Mars is a yellow sand, you can also see the distant horizon.
The Central News Agency reported that Ingenuity flew autonomously for nearly 52 seconds, climbing 4.9 meters in the Martian atmosphere and moving 2.1 meters to the side after a brief hover, tilting at an angle of 5 degrees.
On Friday (April 23, 2021), NASA released the first color photo of an aerial shot of Mars, showing yellow sand on the surface of the planet and a distant horizon. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Then Innovation stalled again and turned three times to capture images in different directions with its color camera, finally landing in the middle of the 10-meter square Wright Brothers Field.
NASA released a color photo today, the first time a vehicle has taken a color image over Mars, on both sides of the image, you can see two of the helicopter’s four tripods.
The photo shows the trajectory left by the Mars Exploration Rover Perseverance on the ground, with the Martian horizon in the upper right corner.
The Innovation mission team believes the photo helps demonstrate the unique aerial reconnaissance capabilities of the drone and future rotorcraft of its kind.
Innovation is scheduled to make its third test flight on Sunday (April 25), and information and images will be transmitted to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) control center in California beginning at 10:16 a.m. EDT that day.
Each test flight will be more difficult, and on the 25th mission, Innovation will also rise to 5 meters above the Martian surface, but at a faster rate. In its two flights so far, Innovation has been traveling at about 0.5 meters per second, and the third will accelerate to 2 meters per second and travel 50 meters north before returning to the airport.
The mission team is planning a flight of up to 80 seconds and a distance of 100 meters. Innovation will make two flights in a week before the 31-day test mission comes to an end.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Innovation chief pilot Grip (Havard Grip) said, “Our plan from day one was to prepare like crazy, fly, (crazy) analyze the data, and then plan to do more daring tests on the next flight.”
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