ALT A straight-on view of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter that was generated using data collected by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard the Perseverance Mars rover. The image was taken a day before the helicopter’s 54th flight and about a week and a half after Flight 53, which was cut short by an unexpected landing. In the image, the helicopter sits peacefully on a blurry, but visibly rocky red Martian terrain. Its four feet rest firmly in the dirt and its blades are sunbathing in the Martian sun.
ALT An aerial view of Mars taken by the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its Flight 54. Several lines of dust pile up on the red Martian surface, along with hundreds of rocks in varying sizes. A small portion of the helicopter’s feet are seen on the image’s far right and left sides. Rover tracks peek out from the image’s top right corner, leading toward the rover, which can be seen near the top of the photo. Most of the rover is cut off from the image, but its identifiable six wheels are visible
ALT The background of space is black. Thousands of galaxies appear all across the view. Their shapes and colors vary. Some are various shades of orange, others are white. Most stars appear blue, and are sometimes as large as more distant galaxies that appear next to them. A very bright star is just above and left of center. It has eight bright blue, long diffraction spikes. Between 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock in its spikes are several very bright galaxies. A group of three are in the middle, and two are closer to 4 o’clock. These galaxies are part of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and they are warping the appearances of galaxies seen around them. Long orange arcs appear at left and right toward the center.
