On April 19, 2022, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter recently surveyed both the parachute that helped the Perseverance rover land on Mars and the cone-shaped backshell that protected the rover in deep space and during its fiery descent toward the Martian surface.
This image of the backshell and supersonic parachute of NASA’s Perseverance rover was captured by the agency’s Ingenuity helicopter during its 26th flight on Mars on April 19, 2022. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Entry, descent, and landing on Mars is fast-paced and stressful, not only for the engineers back on Earth, but also for the vehicle enduring the gravitational forces, high temperatures, and other extremes that come with entering the Martian atmosphere at 20,000 kph (12,500 mph).
Perseverance’s parachute and backshell were previously imaged from a distance by the rover itself. But those collected by the Ingenuity helicopter — from an aerial perspective and closer — provide more detail.
“NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this,” said Ingenuity’s team leader Teddy Tzanetos, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Every time we’re airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve.”
In the images of the upright backshell and the debris field that resulted from it impacting the surface at about 126 kph (78 mph), the backshell’s protective coating appears to have remained intact during Mars atmospheric entry.
Many of the 80 high-strength suspension lines connecting the backshell to the parachute are visible and also appear intact.
Spread out and covered in dust, only about a third of the orange-and-white parachute — at 21.5 m (70.5 feet) wide, it was the biggest ever deployed on Mars — can be seen, but the canopy shows no signs of damage from the supersonic airflow during inflation.
“Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” said former Perseverance systems engineer and now Mars Sample Return ascent phase leader Ian Clark, also from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point.”
“If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing.”
“And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.”
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This article is based on text provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
