During Flight 17 Ingenuity continued with the return to Wright Brothers Field. The flight took the helicopter halfway across the South Séítah region. When landing, Ingenuity lost communication with the Perseverance rover for a short while, possibly because difficult terrain obstructed the line of sight between the antennas. However, radio link was reestablished around 15 minutes after the landing. Telemetry suggests that Ingenuity is healthy and operational.
Atop this ULA Atlas V rocket will be Perseverance, a car-sized rover which will explore an ancient river delta on Mars. Armed with a suite of six scientific instruments, Perseverance will primarily hunt for clues to the planet's distant past, and hopefully uncover signs of ancient life and habitability. The rover also carries an experiment that'll convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, a box-sized helicopter named Ingenuity that'll demonstrate powered flight on Mars, and a system that enables the rover to leave behind samples for later retrieval and return to Earth during NASA and ESA's ambitious sample return mission later this decade.
Heliocentric N/A