NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has nailed a successful debut test flight to Mars, engineers confirmed early Monday morning. The small spacecraft picked itself up about 40 seconds from the surface of Mars, propelling the first flight ever into another world. The historic demonstration offers seductive possibilities for a new way of planetary travel that could steer future rotorcraft far beyond the reach of traditional rovers.
The four-pound Ingenuity helicopter lifts its tissue-sized body around noon (around 03:30 ET) and rotates its double rotor blades to reach its first flight in the ultra-thin atmosphere of Mars faster than 2500 RPM – much faster than the approximately 500 RPM required to fly on Earth. The rotor sport arrived on the Red Planet on February 18 and clings to the lower abdomen of NASA’s Perseverance Rover. It was deployed from Perseverance a month later, on April 4, and a 31-day watch began performing five flight tests.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory cheered after confirming that Ingenuity’s flight attempt was a success. “Confirm that Ingenuity performed its first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet,” downlink engineer Michael Starch said. “We can now say that humans flew with a rotorcraft on another planet,” Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung told NASA engineers in mission control after the helicopter’s successful flight test was confirmed.
“It gives us wonderful hope for all mankind. I could not be more proud, ”tweeted Thomas Zurbuchen, fellow NASA science administrator. After successful confirmation, Zurbuchen said that NASA named Ingenuity’s flight zone Wright Brothers Field, as a tribute to the Wright brothers’ revolutionary flight in 1903 and ‘in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that drives the exploration.’ The helicopter carries a piece of seal size of the Wright brothers’ iconic aircraft on its body.
A black and white image from Ingenuity’s downward navigation camera was the first visual confirmation of the ‘copter’s flight’, showing the shadow of the experimental craft about 10 feet above the surface. Minutes after confirmation, a series of images taken by Perseverance looked about 330 meters away, arrived at the mission control and set Ingenuity’s flight in motion for the first time.
The flight was delayed several times from April 11, with one delay last week requiring engineers to reload Ingenuity’s entire flight software after making a mistake during the flight tests. The helicopter has a flight zone on the Jezero crater of Mars, the site of a dried-up lake that will seek perseverance for signs of microbial life.
The main mission of Velocity is to demonstrate flight, without exploring Mars or conducting scientific experiments. These jobs are reserved for perseverance, the primary life-hunting mission of which involves storing Mars soil samples that will send a future rover back to Earth as early as 2031. cameras on board. The images, scientists say, will emerge in the coming days.
Developing …