CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – A piece of the Wright brothers’ first plane is on Mars.
The space agency on Tuesday revealed that NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter holds a small patch of material from the 1903 Wright Flyer. The helicopter, called Ingenuity, drove the Perseverance Rover to the red planet and arrived last month.
Ingenuity will try the first powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 8th. This would indicate a “Wright brothers moment,” noted Bobby Braun, director of planetary science, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Carillon Historic Park in Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wrights, NASA donated the post green piece of muslin from the left wing of the plane at the request of the aircraft.
Park curator Steve Lucht says the steel of 300 million miles to Mars with the blessing of the grandparents’ great-grandson and great-grandson.
“Wilbur and Orville Wright will be happy to know that a small piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by a quarter of a mile, will be launching on Mars again!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement provided by the park.
Orville Wright was on board for the first powered, controlled flight in the world on December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers took turns making four flights that day.
A fragment of Wright Flyer wood and dust flew with Neil Armstrong in the Apollo 11 to the moon in 1969. A steel also accompanied John Glenn in orbit aboard the Discovery spacecraft in 1998. Both astronauts were from Ohio. .
NASA’s 1.8 kilogram (4 kilogram) helicopter will attempt to rise 3 feet in the extremely thin Mars’ Air with its first hop. Increasingly higher and longer flights are planned over the course of a month to five.
The material is glued to a cable under the solar panel of the helicopter, which sits on top like a graduated mortar board.
For now, Ingenuity remains attached to the belly of the Rover. A protective shield fell off over the weekend, exposing the thin long-haired man.
The helicopter airport is right next to the Rover landing site in the Jezero crater. The wanderer will observe the test flights from a distant seat before driving away to pursue his own mission: to search for signs of ancient Martian life. Rock samples are set aside for eventual return to Earth.
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