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Mars helicopter Ingenuity snaps epic photo of rover tracks, will attempt 3rd flight Sunday

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This photo, snapped on April 22, 2021 by NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity, shows tracks made by the Perseverance rover on Jezero Crater's floor. “This is the first color image of the Martian surface taken by an aerial vehicle while it was aloft,” NASA officials wrote.
This photo, snapped on April 22, 2021 by NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity, shows tracks made by the Perseverance rover on Jezero Crater's floor. “This is the first color image of the Martian surface taken by an aerial vehicle while it was aloft,” NASA officials wrote. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's history-making Mars helicopter Ingenuity will make its third Red Planet flight this weekend, if all goes according to plan.

The Ingenuity team is targeting early Sunday morning (April 25) for sortie number three. The flight plan calls for Ingenuity to get about 16.5 feet (5 meters) above the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater, travel a total of 330 feet (100 m) and stay aloft for 80 seconds, chief pilot Håvard Grip of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a blog post today (April 23). 

Grip did not give an estimated liftoff time but did say that data and photos are expected to starting coming down to Earth around 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT) on Sunday.

Video: Zoom in on Ingenuity helicopter's 1st flight on Mars

Ingenuity's first two flights were not so involved. On its groundbreaking first flight, which occurred on Monday (April 19), Ingenuity went straight up and down, attained a maximum altitude of about 10 feet (3 m) and stayed aloft for 39.1 seconds. On Thursday (April 22), the solar-powered helicopter remained airborne for nearly 52 seconds, got more than 16.5 feet (5 m) high and moved laterally a total of 13 feet (4 m).

During that second flight, Ingenuity snapped a photo of Jezero's floor and the tracks made by its much larger partner, NASA's Perseverance rover. It's "the first color image of the Martian surface taken by an aerial vehicle while it was aloft," NASA officials wrote in a caption for the newly unveiled photo, which Grip featured in his blog post today. (Ingenuity took photos during its first flight as well, but apparently only with its black-and-white navigation camera.)

Ingenuity is a technology demonstration designed to show that aerial vehicles can operate on Mars. A successful flight campaign could open the Red Planet's skies to extensive exploration, NASA officials have said.

The helicopter landed with Perseverance on Feb. 18 and deployed from the rover on April 3 to prep for its month-long flight campaign, which ends in early May. The Ingenuity team aims to make a total of five flights during that span, with each one more ambitious than the last.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Space.com Senior Writer
Michael was a science writer for the Idaho National Laboratory and has been an intern at Wired.com, The Salinas Californian newspaper, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He has also worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz.