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Ingenuity photographs Perseverance’s abandoned parachute on 26th flight

Perseverance's parachute, as photographed by Ingenuity
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

In the past week the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 26th and 27th flights, with the first specifically planned to fly over the parachute that had been used by Perseverance when it landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. The first photo to the right, enhanced, cropped, and reduced to post here, is the color photo of that parachute that Ingenuity took during that flight on April 20th. Near the top of the frame you can also see the equipment used to attach the chute to the rover. The photo looks to the southwest.

The map to the right indicates the flight paths for both hops, both slightly more than 1,000 feet total. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position yesterday, the red dot Perseverance’s position. The small white dot indicates the parachute’s location.

On April 8th Perseverance had snapped a picture of the parachute, from the position indicated by the black dot. Since that photo was taken from a distance, it could not show much. Ingenuity’s more recent photo from overhead however captures the chute quite clearly, and suggests that in the year since landing the weak Martian wind has shifted its edges slightly while depositing some dust on its surface.

You can see the changes at the edges by comparing Ingenuity’s picture with a photo taken on February 19, 2021 by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). In Ingenuity’s picture the near edge of the parachute especially appears to have become bunched up over time, suggesting the prevailing and strongest winds have come from the south.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

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