NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter flew on Mars for the first time early Monday, making spaceflight history and proving that aerial exploration is possible on other planets.
During the flight, it took the photo above, showing the surface of Mars and the drone’s own shadow.
As the 4-pound space drone rose 10 feet above the Martian surface, hovered for 30 seconds, and descended back down, a black-and-white navigation camera on its belly snapped the photo.
Ingenuity’s shadow is clear as day in the Mars dust.
Over the next few hours and days, NASA expects to get video footage from the drone’s color camera and from the Perseverance rover, which carried Ingenuity to Mars and filmed its first flight.
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