NASA’s Mars helicopter spots Perseverance rover from above – can you? (And no, it’s not the shadow of Ingenuity)
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has completed its 11th flight on the planet, capturing dozens of images including one in which its mothership – the Perseverance rover – is almost impossible to spot.
The helicopter took photographs of boulders, sand dunes and rocky outcrops across the South Seitah region of the Jezero Crater, the location of an ancient river delta where NASA hopes it may find the remnants of microbial life.
“Ingenuity’s aerial images are awesome – but even better when you get to play ‘Where’s Perseverance?’ with them,” said Robert Hogg, a senior systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
He said that “once you find our rover and zoom in, you can make out some details, like the wheels, remote sensing mast, and the MMRTG” – the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, its power source – “on the aft end”.
The rover is bright white speck from about 1,600 feet (500m) away and 39 feet (12m) up.
This zoomed-in shot should make things a little easier. Pic: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The laws of physics may say it’s near impossible to fly on Mars, but actually flying a heavier-than-air vehicle on the red planet is much harder than that,” the space agency had quipped about the Ingenuity mission.
The little helicopter’s 11th flight since its maiden voyage back in April was designed to keep it ahead of the rover, flying about 11mph (five metres per second) to capture images of intriguing geologic features.
Ingenuity works autonomously and cannot be controlled by NASA due to the distance between Earth and Mars.
It takes more than 11 minutes to transmit a radio signal 287 million kilometres (178 million miles) back to Earth – while the most recent flight took only 130 seconds.
It follows Perseverance failing in its first attempt to collect a rock sample from Mars as part of the search for signs of ancient life on the planet.
Nasa said on Wednesday that this was down to the rock being unusually soft, and so it was not strong enough to make a sample.
Perseverance’s sample tube came up empty. Pic: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The rover is equipped with a two-metre-long robot arm which has a hollow coring bit and a percussive drill at the end of it to extract samples from beneath the Martian surface.
About half a kilogram in rock and soil samples are intended to be cached in large titanium tubes that the rover will leave on the planet to be collected by a yet-to-be-confirmed future mission.
Elon Musk says he has created a new political party – the America Party –
after asking his followers if he should do so in an online poll.
It follows his public falling out with Republican President Donald Trump.
On Friday, the billionaire had asked his followers on X whether a new US political party should be created.
On Saturday evening he wrote on the same platform: “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!
“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.
“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
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Trump threatens to ‘put DOGE’ on Musk
The world’s richest man made the announcement just one day after President Trump signed a tax-cut and spending bill into law on Friday, which Musk had fiercely opposed.
Musk had previously said we would form and fund a new political party to unseat lawmakers who supported the bill.
From bromance to bust-up
The Tesla boss backed Trump’s election campaign with more than a quarter of a billion dollars, later rewarded with a high profile role running the newly created department of government efficiency (DOGE).
But observers of the two men, both with huge wealth and reputations, wondered how long the bromance would last.
Donald Trump gave Musk a warm send-off in the Oval Office in May. Pic: Reuters
In May Musk left the role, still on good terms with Trump but criticising key parts of his legislative agenda.
After that, the attacks ramped up, with Musk slamming the sweeping tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination” and Trump hitting back in a barbed tit-for-tat.
Trump earlier this week threatened to cut off the billion-dollar federal subsidies that flow to Musk’s companies, and said he would even consider deporting him.
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