Bottom of Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

An Ingenuity team member inspects NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in one of the space simulation chambers at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The helicopter's two cameras are visible in this view of the underside of Ingenuity: one looking straight down and the other at an oblique angle. In the octagonal black frame, the black-and-white navigation camera is the thick circle appearing between and just below the two larger lenses (parts of the laser altimeter that measures the helicopter's height above the ground). The color camera is the circle that is inset from the edge of the fuselage, appearing below the octagonal frame. (An annotated version of the image points out the cameras.) To protect against dust, a clear borosilicate window covers the altimeter and navigation camera, and a clear sapphire window covers the color camera.

Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight at Mars.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory built and will manage operations of Perseverance and Ingenuity for the agency. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Ingenuity, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter.