I saw an article on its first attempted flight tomorrow what says it has two cameras, one colour and one black-and-white downward facing navigation camera.
What advantage is there with back and white that makes it more suitable for this purpose than colour?
My WAG:
There’s little advantage to color images during navigation. And, since the color isn’t necessary, the inherent artifacts introduced by the color mosaic, and the lower resolution due to the color filters and anti-aliasing filter is a detriment.
Scott Manley explains all.
He is so good at that.
The better question is, why the color camera? Scientific work is almost never done with a color camera, because that just introduces more complications. If you want a color image, then you place successive color filters (designed for whatever scientific purpose you have, not for replicating the sensitivity of the human eye) in front of that black-and-white camera, and take multiple exposures.
I’m guessing that they expected the helicopter to move enough to make alignment of multiple exposures difficult, so any color pictures they want must, contrary to usual practice, be taken all at once. That, and cameras are so small and lightweight nowadays, that they could afford to pack an extra one.
Part of NASA’s mandate is to inspire the public. Color pictures with a human spectral response do a better job at that than the alternative. As does putting a sweet helicopter on Mars (despite it not actually having any science instrumentation), or having a nice name instead of a serial number, or a million other things.
? Bog-standard colour cameras are standard for modern geology fieldwork (and microscopy work), since just replicating what the human eye sees is the point - all our field classification schemes are subjective human-centric ones. I’ve never seen fieldwork done with filters and B&W cameras. I don’t doubt it happens, but not as the default. Aerial remote sensing photography uses B&W, but Ingenuity isn’t doing that, it’s just doing pathfinding, and for that, just looking for interesting rocks is all you need.
Hm, I was thinking more of astronomy when I said that-- I don’t have professional experience with geology. But I suppose that areology is a lot more like geology than it is like astronomy, so geology is a lot more relevant here.
While you’re not wrong about tactics aimed at keeping the public invested – look how quickly things fell apart after Apollo 11 – I had the impression it was a proof-of-concept project. Ingenuity weighs less than 2 kilos. Why spend untold money building an aircraft and its instruments and lifting it to Mars when every gram means something else is left off and you’re not sure it’ll work? Seven instruments were included on the lander out of nearly sixty proposals.
As it is, if it lasts long enough it can scout ahead of Perseverance looking for the best route.