In this photo taken on Oct. 1, 2019, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (between left and center rover wheels) have just completed a multiweek evaluation under Mars-like conditions inside a 25-foot-wide, 85-foot-tall (8-meter-by-26-meter) vacuum chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. It marks the first time that Ingenuity was deployed in a flight-like manner from the belly of Perseverance, utilizing all the actuators (motors) and pyrotechnics that will be required to release the rotorcraft from the rover's belly and place it safely on the surface of Mars.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory built and will manage operations of Perseverance and Ingenuity for the agency. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.
For more information about the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/perseverance.For more information about Ingenuity, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter.
