NASA Perseverance Rover Drops Another Debris Again From Ingenuity Helicopter

NASA's Perseverance rover is indeed giving birth to its first-ever helicopter on the Red Planet as it continues to litter on Mars.

Ingenuity: The First Helicopter To Fly on Mars — Downloaded From NASA official website

The rover lowered a protective debris shield onto Mars' atmosphere on March 21. Human crews sterilized the items on Earth to prevent contaminating the ground with microbes. They made the shield to defend Ingenuity during the "seven minutes of fear" landing in February, but it is no longer required.

The debris shield is placed securely on the floor of Jezero Crater, between the rover's six wheels, according to an image from the rover's robotic arm's WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering) camera.

According to CNET, the preparation phase takes about a week. The monitor on the rover's robotic arm is keeping track of the progress and providing us with visual milestones.

Ingenuity's Second Drop

It's Perseverance's second recent decline, after an unneeded belly pan linked to its sampling method.

"Away goes the debris shield, and here's our first look at the helicopter," the Perseverance Twitter account tweeted March 21.

Away goes the debris shield, and here’s our first look at the helicopter. It’s stowed sideways, folded up and locked in place, so there’s some reverse origami to do before I can set it down. First though, I’ll be off to the designated “helipad,” a couple days’ drive from here. pic.twitter.com/E9zZGQk5jQ
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) March 21, 2021

"[The helicopter] is stowed sideways, folded up and locked in place, so there's some reverse origami to do before I can set it down. First, though, I'll be off to the designated 'helipad,' a couple days' drive from here," Perseverance team members wrote on Twitter as the rover.

The Mars helicopter can be seen slowly unfolding from its original location on the rover's belly in a sequence of photographs from Perseverance.

"A couple more drives should get me there," the tweet continued. NASA said the Ingenuity helicopter would attempt its first flight on the first week of April.

ALSO READ: Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Gets To Breathe Red Planet's Air For The First Time

What are These Robots Doing on Mars?

Perseverance is part of a broader mission to look for evidence of habitability in Jezero Crater, which seems to have been a water-rich environment in the past. The rover will hold the most interesting samples it discovers for a potential sample-return mission to Earth.

If Ingenuity flies, it will usher in a new wave of Martian explorers who will be able to scout ahead of rovers and even humans in the decades ahead. The helicopter would also help make surface exploration simpler.

NASA hopes to begin the Ingenuity flight campaign no later than April 8. The space agency hopes Perseverance can safely deploy the helicopter on the surface, which will take six sols or Martian days. That's around 24 hours and 40 minutes here on Earth.

Perseverance teams have been training on Mars time for a few months in order to make the best of the mission's launch, and they expect to have Ingenuity up and running within 30 sols (31 Earth days) of the drone's deployment.