Mars Ingenuity helicopter

In news- NASA’S Ingenuity helicopter flying for the 26th time on Mars has spotted the wreckage of gear that helped it land on Mars.

Key findings-

After spending a year exploring the rocks of the crater it landed in, the Perseverance rover passed near its landing site on its way to a river delta that once flowed along the western rim of the crater.
The rover’s small robotic companion, the helicopter Ingenuity, continues to tag along.
The helicopter has spotted the cocoon that safely got it to the surface of the Red Planet.
During its 26th hop on the alien world, the quadcopter located and captured the wreckage of both the parachute and the cone-shaped back shell.
While the backshell protected the rover in deep space and during its fiery descent towards the Martian surface acting as a heat shield, the parachute slowed it down before the crane dropped the Perseverance rover on the surface.
Ingenuity captured 10 coloured aerial images of the wreckage on the surface of Mars, which is now a human-made space junk on another planet.

About the helicopter–

Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is a small robotic helicopter operating on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission along with the Perseverance rover, which landed on February 18, 2021.
Two months later, on April 19, Ingenuity successfully completed the first powered controlled extraterrestrial flight by an aircraft—taking off vertically, hovering, and landing, for a flight duration of 39.1 seconds.
It was designed and built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
It is operated by solar-charged batteries that power dual counter-rotating rotors mounted one above the other.
It carries a piece of fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer, the Wright Brothers’ airplane used in the first controlled powered heavier-than-air flight on Earth.
Ingenuity’s initial take-off and landing area is named Wright Brothers Field as a tribute.
Before Ingenuity, the first flight of any kind on a planet beyond Earth was an unpowered balloon flight on Venus by the Soviet Vega 1 spacecraft in 1985.
It has got a mission extension on Mars after completing nearly a year-long mission.