Got to be kind of scary trying to fly something that takes a half hour to get any command you send it. I sure wouldn't want that job.
I've always liked that guy.
The growing list of “firsts” for Perseverance, NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on the Martian surface, includes converting some of the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen. A toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) accomplished the task.
The Ingenuity helicopter was a last-minute addition to NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet in February.
Built over three years at a cost of $US80 million ($105 million) from high-tech and off-the-shelf components, the helicopter had a singular mission: to prove it could fly.
Unlike drones on Earth, Ingenuity operates entirely autonomously based on a set of preprogrammed instructions and using its cameras and sensors to stay on track.