NASA Ingenuity Helicopter Spots Spacecraft Wreckage on Mars – Perseverance's Cone-Shaped Backshell:
NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter recently surveyed both the parachute that assisted the agency's 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 on February 18, 2021. Engineers with the Mars Sample Return program asked whether Ingenuity could provide this perspective. What resulted were 10 aerial color images captured on April 19 during Ingenuity's Flight 26.
"NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity's team lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Every time we're airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve. Mars Sample Return's reconnaissance request is a perfect example of the utility of aerial platforms on Mars."
[...] 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 Mars' atmosphere at nearly 12,500 mph (20,000 kph). The parachute and backshell were previously imaged from a distance by the Perseverance rover.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday April 29 2022, @01:44PM (1 child)
Was this part of an extended, maybe if things work out kind of mission? Or are these just gravy shots that they thought up after the fact?
I mean, if this was stuff they didn't have pictures of before, maybe it'll help them. Also, that thing is in a lot worse shape than I would have imagined. I guess the idea was to make sure the rover made it to the surface and survived. Not, a pristine piece of stuff after the landing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @04:04PM
I think finding the wreckage at all was gravy. It could just as easily have gone in the opposite direction.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 29 2022, @02:25PM (1 child)
Imagine if Mars rovers could evolve to eat the wreckage of their lander.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 30 2022, @05:15AM
Maybe not rovers, per-se, but any long term space project benefits heavily from ISRU, and if you don't need it for a return trip then cannibalizing your lander is an efficient use of resources. Most serious lunar and Mars base projects do exactly that with their freight landers. In that light I fully expect that Musk's Mars fuel depot will use decommissioned Starships for the tank farm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29 2022, @04:47PM
Good think we sent it to Mars or it would surely have conquered Earth and enslaved us all by now.