While we may not have boots on the ground on Mars, we definitely have wheels. And a helicopter. Ingenuity recently completed its 26th flight above the surface of the red planet, and this time, NASA engineers had a request: Could Ingenuity please take pictures of Perseverance’s backshell and parachute that had been found by the helicopter back in February.

And Ingenuity got ten color images of Percy’s stuff. If you are watching us on NowMedia, you can see one of the images on screen, which has the backshell’s debris field and the parachute. We will have links to the other images in our show notes at DailySpace.org. Plus if you follow us on Twitter, we shared NASA’s tweet about the images on Wednesday.

Now, these pictures weren’t taken as a lark. They have the potential to make future landings on Mars even safer, and that’s what the engineers want to analyze them for. Landing on Mars is no easy feat. That’s why we keep calling the landings “The 7 Minutes of Terror” and such. You have to slow your craft down from nearly 20,000 kilometers per hour, endure high temperatures, and you know, not crash into lots of pieces.

Space is hard.

More Information

NASA JPL press release