It’s cool, but we can also get useful information out of it. The SuperCam microphone in particular was added as a complement to the laser-induced breakdown spectrometer. We can hear the pops of the laser ablating the rock surface, and from the sound profile tell a lot about how well the laser is coupling to the surface, and how the rock is breaking down. So there will be science from the microphone as well. We may also find it useful to listen to mechanisms on the rover during certain events, or to the wind.
Ingenuity is no longer attached to Percy
Soonest flight is April 11
Brian
That article mentioned that Ingenuity has no scientific instruments. Does it, at least, have a camera?
Yep:
Brian
I can’t speak of people on Mars, and it does get rather chilly at night, but it can get to be almost balmy on Mars during the day; up to around 70 F. Dr. W. W. Coblentz’s measurements weren’t that far off.
Ingenuity pre-flight briefing (live when this is posed)
They did show the 50 RPM rotor spin test video.
Flight is scheduled for 10:54 PM EDT Sunday April 11
Brian
Video of rotors spinning (may not be the best one:
Brian
Ingenuity flight delayed – an issue was found during testing
Brian
I’m sure none of you noticed, but yes, that’s me (Barnacle Bill) in the left background, watching from a safe distance (I hope!).
The test flight is going to be a couple more weeks away by the looks of it:
I’m stupidly excited for this thing to work!
Trial early Monday morning (3:30 a.m. EDT) Live stream 6:15 a.m. EDT
schedule here (mentioned in the above link)
Brian
Success!!!
Woot! They just confirmed a successful takeoff, hover, and touchdown. No pictures yet but there was a good looking altitude graph 
.
Nice, a picture of the choppa’s own shadow.
Sweet, and an animation from Perseverance.
How fast is that shutter speed? Those blades are spinning at 2500 rpm!
Yeah, I was surprised at that too. But clearly it’s at close to local noon, so it must be reasonably bright out. And it’s a B&W cam so it’ll have pretty high capture efficiency.
Time to call it a night. Worth staying up for, though! I’m feeling like the next lander should deploy a dozen of these, and have them autonomously hop away a few hundred meters at a time, spreading out and analyzing the landscape.