Ingenuity Gets an Upgrade on Mars
The tiny 4-pound (1.8 kg) helicopter that hitched a ride to Mars with NASA’s Perseverance rover just got a mission upgrade. Initially planned as a “technology demonstration” to prove whether or not powered flight was possible in the thin martian atmosphere, Ingenuity surpassed all expectations on the—at the time of writing—four flights it has successfully conducted thus far in its short tenure on Mars. Thanks to that success, Ingenuity will now be put through some additional paces, getting an upgrade from a technology demonstration to an operational demonstration.
Having drones on Mars gives the chance to reach places inaccessible by rovers, like flying over dunes where rovers could get stuck in sand or peering over rough terrain. High resolution aerial images could also be used to assist in route planning for rovers. Currently, rover “traverses” are plotted predominantly using satellite imagery from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which takes images at a stunning 25 cm/pixel resolution. To put that in perspective, that’s higher resolution than most…
