The images were taken from a height of 8 meters. The Ingenuity drone took color photos of the “Faillefeu” hill that were then processed into a three-dimensional view.
Nasa’s Perseverance mission continues to deliver spectacular images of the Red Planet. This time, from the Martian dorne Ingenuity, came photos of a 3D aerial view of Mars. It is the hill “Faillefeu” seen in color and in three dimensions immortalized by the robot helicopter of the U.S. space agency. Ingenuity captured the landscape on its 13th flight that have been processed into a three-dimensional view of one of the hilly elevations of Jezero crater.
The 3D images of the rocks of Mars
The photos were taken on September 4 and show in the center the small hill that has been named “Faillefeu”, named after a French medieval abbey, about ten meters wide. Several rocks are clearly visible on the promontory, outcropping and casting sharp shadows. The images were taken from a height of 8 meters and allow us to observe in the background a portion of “Artuby”, a ridge of sand and rocks about 900 meters long and some of the various dunes that are present throughout the South Seitah region. The 3-D view was created by combining data from two images taken 5 meters away by Ingenuity’s on-board color camera.
The Ingenuity helicopter was built by Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which also manages the operations demonstration activity during the mission for the space agency’s headquarters. It is supported by the Science, Aeronautics Research and Space Technology mission directorates. Nasa’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and Nasa’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development. The helicopter was designed to make five flights, but it exceeded initial expectations by making its 13th flight and covering a distance of 2.83 kilometers for a total of nearly 25 minutes of flight time. During these “trips” it has produced a series of fundamental data for the design of future drones even more elaborate than Ingenuity.
In the meantime on Mars a long and powerful earthquake has also been recorded, this time the data came from the InSight Mars lander that is investigating the characteristics of the Red Planet.
Stefania Bernardini