The Mars 2020 rover, Perseverance, also called Persy, has traveled 350 meters on Mars. It is being prepared to take its first core sample. The sample will be picked up by a later mission to the red planet. Persy also carried a small helicopter in its belly. This helicopter is named, Ingenuity and has proved for the first time that flight is possible on another planet in the solar system, specifically, Mars! The helicopter carries with it a piece of the original Wright Brothers Flyer. Ingenuity's launch and landing site has been named, Wright Brother's Field by the Mars Helicopter Team.

Here is a close up selfie that Persy took with Ingenuity on April 6, 2021. NASA released this image and all of the others that are here in this article. Some of them have been modified (i.e. cropped and shrunk) to fit the web pages here at Astra's. There are many images available from NASA with more appearing regularly. NASA's original image of Perseverance’s selfie with Ingenuity is made up of 62 individual images stitched together once they are sent back to Earth. This image is taken with Perseverance's WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

Ingenuity's purpose is to test powered flight in Mars' thin atmosphere, operate autonomously, and test miniaturized flying technology (i.e., computers and electronics). In April 2021, Ingenuity proved itself by making 4 powered flights that month. The first flight came on April 19, 2021. The helicopter rose 10 feet or 3 meters, it hovered, rotated and landed successfully. The whole flight sequence took only 39 seconds, but Ingenuity proved itself expertly. Ingenuity took a picture of its own shadow while it was performing its first flight. Ingenuity's second flight occurred on April 22 , 2021. It rose up 16 feet (4.9 m)in a vertical takeoff and then stopped. It flew .5 meters per second during this flight that lasted 51.9 seconds. Ingenuity proved that the atmosphere on Mars could be used to lift and navigate the small helicopter. It returned the first color image of the Martian surface taken by an aerial vehicle while it was aloft. On April 25, 2021 the third flight lasted 80-seconds. It rose 17 feet (just over 5 meters) and flew at .2 meters per second. Ingenuity's 4th flight occurred on April 30, it lasted 117 seconds and the helicopter took many more images than it had on previous flights.

The fifth flight of Ingenuity helicopter took place on May 7, 2021. It moved from Wright Brothers Field to a location 423 feet (129 meters) away toward the south. Ingenuity rose 33 feet (10m) setting a new record. The flight began at 3:26 p.m. EDT and lasted 108 seconds. Ingenuity is officially moving into an unplanned operations demonstration phase. During this phase, NASA will discover what new capabilities a helicopter might achieve on Mars. The helicopter may prove that tasks like scouting or making aerial observations of areas that a rover can explore directly will assist in the exploration of Mars and other worlds.

Ingenuity's sixth flight on May 22, 2021 was not uneventful. Taking off on May 22, 2021, the helicopter rose from its new airfield. It rose an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) and moved 492 feet (150 meters) to the southwest at 9 mph (4 meters per second.) At the end of the flight the helicopter began to pitch and roll uncontrollable and use a lot of energy to stop and land. Ingenuity uses an onboard inertial measurement unit (IMU)to keep track of its accelerations and rotational rates. This system is aided by images of the surface that are taken by navcams at the rate 30 pictures per second. The images are used by the helicopter’s navigation system that makes adjustments while the vehicle is in flight. One of these images was lost and the timestamps on the images were jumbled causing the system to adjust the flight pattern. Fail-safes written into the navigation system enabled Ingenuity to maintain flight and land safely on the surface within 16 feet (5 meters) of its intended landing site. Now NASA can analyze the flight data and possible improve the helicopter’s performance for future flights and also future missions to the red planet. In any case, Ingenuity has already exceeded expectations.