Engineers flying the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars have spotted a foreign object on the surface in the footage beamed back by the helicopter. The object was seen in the helicopter’s navigation camera footage during its 33rd hop on the alien world.

The Jet propulsion Laboratory, which flies the quadcopter on Mars, said that the foreign object debris was not visible in Navcam footage from the previous flight. The helicopter has been revving up its wings as it continues to aid Perseverance in the search for ancient microbial life on Mars. “The FOD is seen in Flight 33 Navcam imagery from the earliest frames to approximately halfway through the video when it fell from the leg and drifted back to the Mars surface,” JPL said in a blog update.

While the telemetry data indicate that the machine is not damaged, post-flight search and transfer have come out to be nominal. “The Ingenuity and Perseverance Mars 2020 teams are working to discern the source of the debris,” JPL added in its update about the quadcopter. The 33rd flight for the helicopter on Mars saw it climb to an altitude of 10 meters above the surface, covering a distance of 111.238 meters. The helicopter revved at a speed of 4.75 meters per second and remained airborne for 55.61 seconds. The aim of the flight was to reposition the helicopter.

The small, autonomous aircraft has been on Mars for over a year now, during which it has not only demonstrated its ability to fly in the Red Planet’s thin air, but also act as a guide for the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity was deployed to the surface on April 4, 2021, and on April 19, it became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet.