Perseverance stands out in this selfie with the Ingenuity Mars helicopter as well.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
The Perseverance rover has been busy taking pictures of itself (including this charming look on his ‘face’), but now we have the full overview. NASA released a glorious, full-body selfie of the rover with its Mars companion, the Ingenuity helicopter on Wednesday.
The image shows the rover, which still looks quite clean after it landed in mid-February, and the small experimental helicopter Ingenuity. The helicopter is preparing to make its first test flight no earlier than Sunday.
The rover used the Watson camera on its robotic arm to take the 62 photos used for the selfie. The photo marathon took place on April 6. To get an idea of the scale, the helicopter is about 4 meters away from its wheeled companion.
The Perseverance team tweeted a slightly different version of the selfie in GIF form showing the rover’s “head” moving from looking to ingenuity to looking at the camera.
The rover dropped off Ingenuity’s helicopter on the ground over the weekend and will watch as the daring little helicopter plane tries to make the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. NASA hopes to receive images of the flight, along with technical data on the performance of the rotorcraft.
The selfie is a fitting tribute to two machines that are pioneering work on Mars.
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