INGENUITY PHONED HOME

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Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which landed Feb. 18, 2021, at Jezero Crater attached to the belly of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, reported in on February 20. The downlink, which arrived at 3:30 p.m. PST (6:30 p.m. EST) via a connection through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, indicates that both the helicopter, and its base station (an electrical box on the rover that stores and routes communications between the rotorcraft and Earth) are operating as expected.

Mars 2020 Rover and Helicopter MHDS Mars Helicopter Deployment System 25 Foot Space Simulator B150 Airlock Pre-Stt (surface thermal testing) Functionals Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Photographer: J.Krohn 01-NOV-2019 070915-173831

In this photo taken on Oct. 1, 2019, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (between left and center rover wheels) have just completed a multiweek evaluation under Mars-like conditions (temp -130F/-90C) inside a 25-foot-wide, 85-foot-tall vacuum chamber at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. It is the first time Ingenuity was deployed in a flight-like manner from the belly of Perseverance, utilizing all the actuators (motors) and pyrotechnics that will be required to release the rotorcraft from the rover’s belly and place it safely on the surface of Mars.