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Mars helicopter kicks up 'cool' dust clouds — and unexpected science News 16 JUN 21 - Nature.com
Jun 16, 2021 1 min, 50 secs

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is the first spacecraft to successfully achieve controlled flight on another planet.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS.

Ingenuity, NASA’s pint-sized Mars helicopter, has kicked up some surprising science on its flights over the red planet.

When whizzing through the Martian air, its blades sometimes stir up a dust cloud that envelops and travels along with the tiny chopper.

In several videos of Ingenuity’s flights, planetary scientists have seen dust whirling beneath the helicopter’s rotors — even when Ingenuity is flying as high as 5 metres above the Martian surface.

On its fourth flight, on 30 April, Ingenuity kicked up a large bolus of dust that travelled along with the helicopter as it flew, as shown in this video taken by Perseverance.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI.

By watching how Ingenuity entrains dust as it flies, researchers can better understand the dynamics of Mars’s thin atmosphere, where tornado-like ‘dust devils’ often form when the Sun heats the air and afternoon winds begin to blow.

The agency's Perseverance rover carried Ingenuity to the surface of Mars in February!

In April, Ingenuity became the first machine to achieve powered flight on another planet.

Dust devils like this one, 20 kilometres high and captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, regularly swirl across the Martian surface.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA.

On the first two flights, Ingenuity kicked up a fair amount of dust as it rose 3 to 5 metres above the surface, but it didn’t travel far from its takeoff point and the dust cloud phenomenon wasn’t pronounced.

On its third flight, the helicopter rose 5 metres and then flew north from its takeoff point, kicking up a cloud from several light-coloured patches it flew over on the Martian surface.

A video, recorded by Perseverance from a vantage point nearby, shows the helicopter rise, disappear from view, and then re-appear while enveloped in an enormous cloud of dust following a 133-metre flight.

Lemmon plans to compare tracks on the Martian surface left behind by natural dust devils with those where the helicopter kicked up the most dust.

That will help researchers to better understand how winds blowing across Mars can lift dust and spin it into dust devils.

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