In a hardscrabble crater on Mars, a small helicopter with a smartphone brain is now days away from the first car flight in another world. NASA hopes that its slender robotic copper, called Ingenuity, will prove that powered flight is possible in the dangerously thin Marslug and will help usher in a new era of planetary exploration in which drones play an important role.
Ingenuity reaches Mars like a getaway, folded at the bottom of NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which landed on the red planet in February after a seven-month journey of 293 million miles from Earth. For its first flight, the $ 85 million vessel will rise from about £ 10 about 10 feet above the surface and soar – not higher than the edge of a basketball hoop – before returning to the surface. The entire flight must be completed within 90 seconds.
The short outing – one of five planned for a period of one month and expected to begin on April 11 – is a short jump according to the measures of interplanetary travel. But agency officials said it would be a giant leap for Mars reconnaissance. In the future, they said, autonomous drones like Ingenuity could take to the air to explore ravines, icebergs and other sites inaccessible to robbers. Should human explorers ever land on Mars, drones could serve as scouts and air sensors.
“We hope Ingenuity enables us to expand aviation on Mars,” said Bob Balaram, chief engineer of the project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The Flight of Ingenuity, part of a broader mission to search for signs of past life on the red planet, is the latest in a spate of striking Mars moments this year.