NASA efficiently flew its tiny helicopter Ingenuity on Mars early Monday, the primary powered flight on one other planet and a feat a prime engineer known as “our Wright brothers’ moment.”
At 3:34 am Eastern Time (0734 GMT), the 4 pound (1.eight kilogram) rotorcraft lifted off, hovered 10 toes (three meters) above the Martian floor, then got here again to relaxation after 39.1 seconds.
Data and pictures from the autonomous flight had been transmitted 173 million miles (278 million kilometers) again to Earth the place they had been acquired by NASA’s array of floor antennas and processed greater than three hours later.
— NASA (@NASA) April 19, 2021
Engineers had been tensely watching their screens on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the place the mission had been designed and deliberate for the previous six years.
They broke into applause as certainly one of them learn off a guidelines of duties Ingenuity had achieved and concluded: “Ingenuity has performed its first flight — the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet.”
Ingenuity shortly despatched again a black-and-white picture from its downward pointing navigation digicam, exhibiting its bug-like shadow forged on the floor.
You would not imagine what I simply noticed.
— NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) April 19, 2021
Then got here a uneven shade video from the Perseverance rover exhibiting Ingenuity on the bottom, in flight, after which as soon as once more at relaxation.
More photos and a smoothed-out video are anticipated to comply with.
“We’ve been talking so long about our Wright brothers’ moment on Mars, and here it is,” mentioned lead engineer MiMi Aung to her crew, as she doled out digital hugs.
The first powered flight on Earth was achieved by the Wright brothers in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
A chunk of cloth from that aircraft has been tucked inside Ingenuity in honor of that feat.
NASA had initially deliberate the flight for April 11 however postponed it over a software program situation that was recognized throughout a deliberate high-speed check of the plane’s rotors.
The situation was later resolved by way of the assistance of a software program replace and tweak in coding.
Ingenuity traveled to Mars connected to the underside of Perseverance, which touched down on the planet on February 18 on a mission to seek for indicators of extraterrestrial life.
Ingenuity’s aim, against this, is to reveal its expertise works, and it will not contribute to Perseverance’s science objectives.
But it’s hoped that Ingenuity can pave the way in which for future flyers that revolutionize our exploration of celestial our bodies as a result of they’ll attain areas that rovers cannot go, and journey a lot sooner.
“We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky — at least on Mars — may not be the limit,” mentioned performing NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk.
The flight was difficult due to situations vastly totally different from Earth’s — an environment that has lower than one p.c the density of our personal, and gravitational pull of solely a 3rd.
That made it mandatory for Ingenuity’s rotors to attain round 2,500 revolutions per minute, roughly 5 occasions better than helicopters obtain on Earth.
As nicely as high-tech parts, the plane accommodates many off-the-shelf smartphone components that had been examined in area for the primary time on this mission.
Next flight quickly
Ingenuity was deployed to its “flight strip” on April Three and is now within the 16th sol, or Martian day, of its 30-sol (31-Earth day) flight check window.
The crew will proceed to obtain and analyze information within the coming days, then formulate a plan for the second flight, which might be no sooner than April 22.
“We will take a moment to celebrate our success and then take a cue from Orville and Wilbur regarding what to do next,” mentioned Aung.
“History shows they got back to work — to learn as much as they could about their new aircraft — and so will we.”
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