This image from NASA’s Perseverance rover shows the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter right after it successfully completed a high-speed spin-up test. It was captured by the Mastcam-Z instrument on Perseverance on April 16, 2021, (the 55th sol, or Martian day, of the rover’s mission). The image has been slightly processed (stretched and cropped).
On Monday, April 19, 2021, the Ingenuity Helicopter took flight on the Red Planet, becoming the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech