Rover spies distant Helicopter

Rover spies distant Helicopter on Sol 181. Estimated distance is ~315 meters (1033 feet)

Credit to @65dbnoise on Twitter who spied the distant helicopter after predicting its location in relation to Kodiak Mesa after the flight, he was just waiting for the MastCam-Z frames to verify his calculations. Twitter : twitter.com/65dbNoise/status/1430517713978413058

Details

Mars Perseverance Sol 181: Left Mastcam-Z Camera

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Left Mastcam-Z camera.

Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast.

This image was acquired on August 23, 2021 (Sol 181) at the local mean solar time of 12:25:20.

Source: raw image: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/pub/ods/surface/sol/00181/ids/edr/browse/zcam/ZL0_0181_0683008293_848ECM_N0070000ZCAM08199_034085J01.png

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

I’m hoping they’ll image it with SuperCam, then we’ll have a better idea. The sandy finger it is on is not very wide, so it wont be very tall. You can use the helicopters shadow during landing as a scale to measure the width of those long thin dunes as its shadow is 1.2 always meters wide.

They do have both images, but the lenses were only set at 34mm zoom. Hopefully we’ll see then zoom in to the full 110mm in the next day or two, or even use the SuperCam to image the helicopter and its situation a lot better. We know from the landing images from the helicopter that at least one of the feet sank a small amount into the sand, so it will be interesting to see how level the blades are before they plan the next flight. They will already know that information as the rotorcraft has internal sensors that can report its position.

Posted by u/paulhammond5155, Top contributor – linkage