58
Wow, nearing 2 hours of flight time.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover
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The duration of both flight 65 and 66 are just over 1 minute, so we'll still be just under two hours by this time on November 2nd (JPL time zone). If after conjunction flight 67 is a scouting, or relocation flight, we should rotate the hour meter enough to reach that milestone. However, they could choose to a short hop for 67 to blow off any dust that settled in the 3 weeks of so it was standing down. Time will tell, but I'm looking forward to passing the 2 hour mark before the end of the year :)
Just a note from your friendly neighborhood pedant, “maybe” should be “may be” in this context.
Yup, I hit the character limit for the title, so had to be a little creative LOL
That dust just gets everywhere. This things been flying around everywhere and it still took on the color of the planet
That particular image was acquired just after it was deployed by the rover on April 6, 2021 (Sol 45) Prior to its first flight, which took place on April 19, 2021 (Sol 58)
It's thought that the dust on the solar array panel was accumulated above the helicopter during landing (by the enormous dust cloud kicked up by the landing thrusters) The six weeks the helicopter spent strapped under the rover while they hunted for a suitable deployment location for the helicopter probably also led to some additional dust buildup.
It's much dustier these days, but sadly they have not taken any matching close-up images in the 2.5 years since deployment.
Ah so the preview image isn't directly related to the content of the post, that makes sense. Thanks!
Correct, the mission team usually select one from an earlier flight :) In this case they used a Black and White image, so I dug through the archive and used that colour image, sorry for the confusion :)