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Headline: NASA Reveals First Aerial Colour Photo From Mars

Caption: NASA‘s very own Mars Ingenuity helicopter has revealed further details of the “Red Planet” with its first-ever colour photo. The photo identifies a sharper focus on Mars’ rusty, red-orange sandscape that blankets the surface of the planet. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured the image with its colour 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. The winding parallel discolorations in the surface reveal the tread of the six-wheeled rover. Perseverance itself is located top center, just out frame. “Wright Brothers Field” is in the vicinity of the helicopter’s shadow, bottom center, with the actual point of take-off of the helicopter just below the image. A portion of the landing pads on two of the helicopter’s four landing legs can be seen in on the left and right sides of the image, and a small portion of the horizon can be seen at the upper right and left corners. Mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed approximately 22 degree below the horizon, Ingenuity’s high-resolution colour camera contains a 4208-by-3120-pixel sensor.

Keywords: first aerial colour image of mars,first aerial color image of mars,NASA,Space,Mars

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