NASA scores Wright Brothers moment with first helicopter flight on Mars

(Reuters) - NASA scored a 21st-century Wright Brothers moment yesterday as it sent its miniature robot helicopter Ingenuity buzzing above the surface of Mars for nearly 40 seconds, marking the first powered controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.

Officials at the U.S. space agency hailed the brief flight of the 4-pound (1.8kg) rotorcraft as an achievement that would help pave the way for a new mode of aerial exploration on Mars and other destinations in the solar system, such as Venus and Saturn’s moon Titan.

The debut flight of Ingenuity, resembling a large metallic tissue box with four legs and a twin-rotor parasol, was documented in full-color video by cameras aboard the science rover vehicle Perseverance, which carried the helicopter to the Red Planet two months ago.

Mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles burst into applause and cheers as data beamed back from Mars confirmed the solar-powered helicopter had performed its maiden 39-second flight three hours earlier, precisely as planned.

“We can now say that human beings have flown an aircraft on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at JPL, during a NASA livestream of the flight confirmation.

Altimeter readings from the rotorcraft showed it became airborne at 3:34 a.m. EDT (0734 GMT), climbed as programmed to a height of 10 feet (3 meters), then hovered steadily in place over the Martian surface for half a minute while pivoting 96 degrees before making a firm but safe touchdown, NASA said.

“That’s what we told Ingenuity to do, and it did exactly that,” Havard Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot at JPL, told a postflight briefing. He called the flight “flawless.”

NASA likened the achievement to the Wright Brothers’ first controlled flight of their motor-driven airplane near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December 1903 - a takeoff and landing that covered just 120 feet (37 meters) in 12 seconds.

“This is really a Wright brothers moment,” acting NASA chief Steve Jurczyk said at the briefing.

Early images included a black-andwhite still photo taken by a downwardpointing onboard camera while the helicopter was aloft, showing the distinct shadow cast by Ingenuity in the Martian sunlight onto the ground below it.

A separate camera mounted on Perseverance, parked about 200 feet away, captured video of the rotorcraft’s entire flight against the butterscotch-colored landscape surrounding it.

Despite the flight’s brevity and lessthan-soaring altitude, it marked an historic feat in interplanetary aviation, taking place on an “air field” 173 million miles from Earth on the floor of a vast Martian basin called Jezero Crater.

In honor of the modest but monumental first human flight 117 years ago at Kitty Hawk, NASA officially designated Ingenuity’s flight zone as Wright Brothers Field, a location recognized by the International Civil Aviation Organization in a certificate issued to NASA for the occasion.

NASA also paid tribute to the Wrights by affixing a tiny swatch of wing fabric from their original flyer under Ingenuity’s solar panel before sending it off to Mars.