Helicopter Ingenuity’s first aerial color 4K photo of Mars

On April 23, 2021 NASA published Ingenuity Helicopter’s first ever in-flight image of Mars being in the air on 5 meters altitude within 2nd flight. This is the first color image of the Martian surface taken by an aerial vehicle while it was aloft. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured it with its color camera during its second successful flight test on April 22, 2021. At the time this image, Ingenuity was 17 feet (5.2 meters) above the surface and pitching (moving the camera’s field of view upward) so the helicopter could begin its 7-foot (2-meter) translation to the west – away from the rover. The image, as well as the inset showing a closeup of a portion of the tracks the Perseverance Mars rover and Mars surface features, demonstrates the utility of scouting Martian terrain from an aerial perspective. Mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed approximately 22 degree below the horizon, Ingenuity’s high-resolution color camera contains a 4208-by-3120-pixel sensor. There is also 4K video of 2nd flight