{"id":11777,"date":"2021-03-30T21:47:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T13:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/perseverance-rover-begins-steps-to-deploy-mars-helicopter\/"},"modified":"2021-03-30T21:47:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T13:47:00","slug":"perseverance-rover-begins-steps-to-deploy-mars-helicopter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/perseverance-rover-begins-steps-to-deploy-mars-helicopter\/","title":{"rendered":"Perseverance rover begins steps to deploy Mars helicopter"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: <\/strong>Updated at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 GMT) with a fresh pictures of all four landing legs deployed.<\/p>\n

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The Ingenuity helicopter deployed its final two carbon composite landing legs Tuesday. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s Ingenuity helicopter is being lowered from the belly of the Perseverance rover this week as ground teams run through a choreographed long-distance command sequence to safely release the $80 million rotorcraft onto the surface of Mars.<\/p>\n

The slow, step-by-step deployment is projected to take around six days, assuming everything goes as planned. The first command uplinked from engineers at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was to release a launch lock that kept the Ingenuity helicopter firmly attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover during the journey to Mars.<\/p>\n

Images captured by a camera on the end of the rover\u2019s 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) robotic arm showed the launch lock was released over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Then a pyrotechnic device cut a cable to allow Ingenuity to begin rotating out of its horizontal position underneath the rover, and the helicopter extended two of its four landing legs. Pictures from the rover\u2019s robotic arm camera Sunday showed the helicopter tilted at an angle below the craft\u2019s belly, as expected.<\/p>\n

An electric motor then fully rotated Ingenuity into a vertical orientation underneath the rover, a step confirmed in imagery downlinked from Mars on Monday. The helicopter\u2019s body measures about 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) tall.<\/p>\n

The deployment sequence continued Tuesday to extend the helicopter\u2019s other two landing legs. At that point, the helicopter remained attached to the rover by a single bolt and a couple of tiny electrical connectors, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

On the day before Perseverance releases the helicopter, the Ingenuity team at JPL will fully charge the rotorcraft\u2019s six battery cells using electricity from the rover\u2019s plutonium power source. Then the rover will sever its connection to the helicopter to drop about 5 inches (13 centimeters) down to the Martian surface.<\/p>\n

If ground teams determine the deployment sequence is going well, the helicopter could be deposited on the Martian surface by the end of this week.<\/p>\n

As soon as next week, the rotorcraft could make the first powered flight in the atmosphere of a planet beyond Earth. Future missions to other worlds could use aerial scouts to reach locations beyond the range of ground-based vehicles.<\/p>\n

The six-wheeled Perseverance rover landed Feb. 18 in Jezero Crater, which scientists say contained a large lake of liquid water more than three billion years ago. Since the landing, Perseverance has activated its cameras and instruments and scouted a flat \u201cairfield\u201d for Ingenuity to take off and land on a series of test flights next month.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the rover jettisoned the debris cover that shielded the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft for landing.<\/p>\n