THEY FINALLY DID IT! NASA takes its first historic flight on Mars
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Florida April 19: LIFT-OFF CONFIRMED! Scripting history, NASA achieved a major feat in engineering marvel after it successfully flown its 'Ingenuity' mini helicopter for the very first time on the surface of Mars.
NASA engineers confirmed the news on Monday afternoon. NASA officials have compared this to the arrival of the Wright Brothers in 1903 for the first time.
The test flight took place on the floor of Martian land called Jezero Crater, almost 173 million miles away from Earth. The flight took place at 3:30 am US eastern daylight time. The helicopter cut off its carbon fiber rotor blades and lifted itself into thin Martian air for 40 seconds. It rose about three meters above the ground, leaned over to look at NASA’s Perseverance Rover, took a picture, and sat back on the ground. The rover was watching Ingenuity’s flight from a distance of roughly 330 feet away with two of its onboard cameras.
NASA had controlled the helicopter from 178 million miles at NASA headquarters, where operators had to wait more than three hours for confirmation.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory broke out in cheers upon confirmation that Ingenuity’s flight attempt was a success. “Confirmed that Ingenuity has performed its first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet,” downlink engineer Michael Starch declared. “We can now say that humans beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung told NASA engineers in mission control after confirmation of the helicopter’s successful flight test.
With that first successful powered flight, the space agency has marked a major milestone in its extraterrestrial exploration program.
Ingenuity will now undertake several additional, lengthier flights in the weeks ahead, though it will need to rest four to five days in between each to recharge its batteries. The helicopter will test flight conditions in the planet's atmosphere, which is colder and has different levels of gravity. The pull of gravity on the Red Planet is less, which helps - but even so engineers have had to build the chopper very light with a mass of just 1.8kg.Mars possesses much less gravity than Earth, its atmosphere is just 1 percent as dense.
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