What’s new with Percy the Mars rover?
Early Monday, a tiny helicopter flew on Mars 
. It was a short hop, just up and down, for Ingenuity 
, which hitched a ride to space inside the Perseverance rover 
in February. And it was an extraordinary feat: the first-ever powered flight on another planet.
Ginny the chopper made another successful hop on Thursday. She’ll keep doing these test flights in the thin Mars air under the watchful gaze of Percy, which will relay images and data back to NASA.
The flight is one of several astonishing successes so far, in a Martian-year-long mission dedicated to a centuries-old mystery: Did ancient microbial life flourish somewhere besides Earth?
Mars
YEAR (Earth days)
687
Length of day
24h 39m
DIAMETER (miles)
4,200
TEMPERATURE (average)
-64°F
Perseverance touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 in the Jezero Crater. Some 3.5 billion years ago, the depression was formed by a meteorite and became a lake fed by a river, scientists believe. Their clue? The presence of clay minerals that form only in the presence of water. In this delta, Perseverance may find signs of ancient life. It will try to collect them and use onboard instruments to analyze their chemical composition. And Percy will preserve rock and soil samples until a future mission comes to pick them up, like the Smithsonian...on Mars.
Perseverance
Size (ft.)
10x9x7
Weight (approx. lbs.)
2,260
Speed (mph)
0.1
Cameras
23
Mars is farther from the sun than Earth and it takes much longer to orbit, so a Mars year is equivalent to 687 Earth days. That’s the same length of time as Percy’s mission. A Mars day, called a sol, is also longer — 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds. For these missions, NASA follows Mars time and Percy’s workday on the planet (which really screws up the sleep schedule of the agency’s scientists). The day the rover landed and began its mission is Sol 0.
Earthlings have long stared up at the fiery Red Planet. Babylonians named it Nergal. Galileo first viewed it through a telescope in 1609. In recognition of this wonder, microchips etched with the names of 10.9 million humans adorn one of the rover’s crossbeams. (NASA did a callout!) As Perseverance traverses the planet, each step builds to the next. Each test builds knowledge.
In the sections below, readers can follow the historic mission, through video, photographs and audio that Percy has sent back and can see the daunting terrain through Post maps created with NASA data.
Sol
0
Rover Status
In flight
SOL 0 / 687
Touchdown
Hurtling toward the surface of Mars at about 12,000 mph, Perseverance entered its atmosphere at 3:48 p.m. Feb. 18. Over seven nail-biting minutes, the spacecraft began a carefully choreographed sequence of disassembling itself, slowing down and guiding itself to a landing site on the Jezero Crater, which is only 4.8 miles wide.
After deploying its parachute, the spacecraft shed its heat shield and back shell. Using a terrain-relative navigation system to guide the spacecraft toward the landing site, its eight retrorockets fired up to slow the craft down more. Once it was 65 feet from the landing site, Perseverance was lowered to the surface.
Photos / The heat shield drops away as Perseverance continues its descent.
Video / “Tango delta. Touchdown confirmed,” a jubilant Swati Mohan, guidance and controls operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, announced at 3:55 p.m. “Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.”
SOL 0 / 687
The sound of Mars
About 18 hours after landing, using a microphone stowed on its deck, Perseverance recorded the first sounds from the surface of Mars — the wind blowing on the planet. It sounds like the ocean in a seashell.
Photo / The first high-resolution color image taken on the first day of the mission showing the underside of the rover.
SOL 0 / 687
Mars in 360
On the third Martian day of the mission, Perseverance made a high-resolution, 360-degree panorama that shows the landing site inside the craggy crater. Made of 142 individual images captured by Mastcam-Z, a zoomable pair of cameras mounted to the rover’s mast, it provides exquisite detail of the planet’s surface. Scientists will use high-resolution images captured by these cameras to help them identify rocks and sediments for closer study.
Panoramic / A 360-degree panorama, taken by Mastcam-Z on Sol 3.
SOL 0 / 687
All systems go
Perseverance has undergone several checks and tests of its parts and instruments, as part of a 90-sol initial checkout period to prepare the rover and its human team. NASA’s operations team on Earth has shifted its schedule to align with the rover’s grueling work day.
Video / On Sol 10, Perseverance’s weather sensors were deployed. On Sol 12, the rover flexed and turned its robotic arm.
Video / On Sol 14, Percy wiggled its wheels.
SOL 0 / 687
First science test
On the 12th Martian day of the mission, Perseverance conducted its first scientific study, on a nearby rock that NASA named Máaz, the Navajo word for Mars. Audio captures the sound of lasers zapping the rock to determine its hardness and the presence of weathering coatings. “Máaz has a basaltic composition. It is either an igneous (in other words, volcanic) rock or consists of fine grains of igneous material that were cemented together in a watery environment,” NASA said in a statement that included analysis of data collected by Percy’s SuperCam.
Photo / A close-up view of Máaz captured by the rover’s SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager.
SOL 0 / 687
First drive
On Sol 14, Perseverance conducted its first mobility test on the Red Planet — a chance to “kick the tires,” as NASA test bed engineer Anais Zarifian put it in a news release. The drive was short but exciting: It lasted 33 minutes and covered a distance of 21.3 feet at a speed of 0.01 miles per hour. The rover, roughly the size of a car 10 feet long and seven feet tall, has six wheels, four of which turn independently.
Photos / Percy’s first drive in a series of images shot by its navigation camera
Photo / Tracks from Perseverance seen in an image captured by the rover’s Hazcams.
SOL 0 / 687
Route to the delta
Scientists believe the best hope for finding signs of ancient microbial life is on a particular delta, where a river once fed Jezero lake. On Sol 15, NASA revealed two possible routes for Percy to make the 1.5-mile trip. The agency weighs what is the most efficient and safest route against the most scientifically interesting, said project scientist Katie Stack Morgan. The first route is smoother. The second route has remnant deposits that are of particular interest. The route will be announced once the helicopter’s flight tests have concluded.
Photo / An image released by NASA on Sol 15 shows the fan-shaped deposit of sediments known as the Jezero Delta. The image was captured in February by the Mastcam-Z instrument.
SOL 0 / 687
Ingenuity’s airfield
Percy does housekeeping, too. It swept off the airfield prior to NASA’s Sol 30 announcement of a flight zone for Ginny’s first test. The 33-by-33-foot flat airfield just north of the landing site is considered a safe place for the $80 million Ginny to take off and land without hitting, say, a rock. The 300-foot flight zone offers texture — enough for the chopper to see and photograph.
Photo / Ingenuity helicopter flight zone seen from an image captured by Perseverance.
SOL 0 / 687
Dropping and deploying Ingenuity
Ginny was successfully detached from Percy’s underbelly on Sol 43. The rover rumbled away, leaving the helicopter with 25 hours of life in its batteries, which have to be kept warm to survive in a frigid atmosphere that can dip down to minus-130 degrees Fahrenheit. Ingenuity stays charged through its solar array.
Photo / Ingenuity seen up close by Mastcam-Z on Sol 45. As a tribute to the Wright Brothers’ first flight, a small piece of fabric that once covered one of the wings of their aircraft is attached to a cable under Ginny’s solar panels.
Photo / NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter swings down, with two of its four legs extended, from the belly of Perseverance on Sol 37.
Photo / Percy captured one last selfie with Ginny ahead of the big flight test. The two are seen about 13 feet apart. The composite image captured on Sol 46 is made of 62 individual images.
SOL 0 / 687
Flight delay
A high-speed spin test of Ingenuity’s rotors ended early on Sol 49, when the flight computer’s safeguard kicked in while the chopper was transitioning from “preflight” to “flight” mode.
Photos / Ingenuity performs a spin test on Sol 48.
SOL 0 / 687
First flight
At 12:33 Local Mean Solar Time on Sol 58 of the mission, Ingenuity rose above the surface in the first powered flight to take place on another planet. The four-pound, 19.3-inch-tall helicopter rose 10 feet from the surface and hovered for about 30 seconds before touching back down. “We together flew on Mars!” MiMi Aung, NASA’s Ingenuity program manager said, applauding the work the team has done over the last six years.
“We’ve been thinking so long about having our Wright Brothers moment,” she said, “and here it is. We will take a moment to celebrate our success and then take a cue from Orville and Wilbur regarding what to do next. History shows they got back to work — to learn as much as they could about their new aircraft.”
Photo / Ingenuity’s shadow is seen during its first flight from a camera looking down at the surface.
SOL 0 / 687
Converting carbon dioxide into oxygen
Just two sols after Ginny first took flight, Percy tested out Moxie — that’s the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resources Utilization Experiment instrument. It’s designed to convert carbon dioxide from the thin Martian atmosphere into oxygen by separating oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules (C02). And it worked! The purpose of this first demonstration was to make sure the instrument survived the journey to Mars.
Nine more tests will be run to see if oxygen that Moxie generates can be used for humans to breathe on Mars and for rocket propellant to get back to Earth. The Martian atmosphere is made of 98 percent carbon dioxide. “Moxie has more work to do,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “But the results from this technology demonstration are full of promise as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars.”
Graphic / After a two-hour warm-up period, Moxie produced oxygen at a rate of 6 grams per hour for a total of 5.4 grams, which would supply an astronaut with 10 minutes of breathable oxygen under normal activity.
Ingenuity performed its second test flight of 51.9 seconds on Sol 61 (also known as April 22). The helicopter will continue to perform a series of flight tests throughout the 30-sol flight-test window, while Perseverance will serve as a communication relay between the helicopter, Mars orbiters and mission control back on Earth. Following the flight tests, Perseverance will then begin surface operations, moving toward the delta to search for signs of ancient microbial life.