NASA's Ingenuity, Perseverance Snap Photos of Each Other on Mars
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently snapped an expansive photo of the Red Planet, looking almost Earth-like in all its rugged splendor. But look more closely, and you'll see a few Easter eggs hidden in the image.
The first is NASA's other Martian explorer—the Perseverance rover—at the rim of Belva Crater on the 772nd sol of its mission. The bot, which appears as a small blob in the upper-left corner of the picture, was captured on film during Ingenuity's 51st flight on April 22, its 772nd Martian day cruising around Mars.
"The rover is in the upper left of the image, parked at a light-toned rocky outcrop the science team is calling 'Echo Creek,'" according to(Opens in a new window) NASA. Perseverance's tracks can be seen extending from its location to the upper-right side of the photo.
Ingenuity, meanwhile, also shows up—albeit as a shadow. Zoom in on what looks like a speck of dirt just right of the image's center: That's NASA's rotorcraft.
The autonomous chopper, which landed alongside Perseverance on Mars in early 2021, was intended to perform a 30-day tech demonstration, making five short flights. More than two years later, the machine has completed 51 journeys (and counting).
The hill over which it's hovering, designated "Mount Julian" by the NASA science team, is a planned future stop for Perseverance. A small triangular piece of debris from the rover's entry, descent, and landing system gleams at the very bottom of the image.
Perseverance, likewise, caught the Mars Helicopter on camera recently(Opens in a new window), though Ingenuity is much harder to find in the rover's shadier snapshot (above). Spoiler alert: It's hiding on the left, next to a giant rock, about halfway between the top of the hill and the
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