Nasa’s Ingenuity helicopter takes flight on Mars
Nasa’s experimental helicopter Ingenuity rose into the thin air above the dusty red surface of Mars on Monday, achieving the first powered flight by an aircraft on another planet.
The triumph was hailed as a Wright Brothers moment. The mini 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) copter even carried a bit of wing fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, which made similar history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
“Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight, the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet,” said the helicopter's chief pilot back on Earth, Havard Grip, his voice breaking as his teammates erupted in applause.
It was a brief hop — just 39 seconds — but accomplished all the major milestones.
Project manager Mimi Aung was jubilant as she ripped up the papers holding the plan in case the flight had failed. “We've been talking so long about our Wright
Brothers moment, and here it is,” she said.
Flight controllers at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California declared success after receiving the data and images via the Perseverance rover, which stood watch more than 200 feet (65 meters) away. Ingenuity hitched a ride to Mars on Perseverance, clinging to the rover's belly upon their arrival in an ancient river delta in February.
The $85 million helicopter demo was considered high risk, yet high reward. “Each world gets only one first flight,” Aung observed earlier this month.
Ground controllers had to wait more than three excruciating hours before learning whether the pre-programmed flight had succeeded more than 170 million miles (287 million kilometers) away. Adding to their anxiety: A software error prevented the helicopter from lifting off a week earlier and had engineers scrambling to come up with a fix. When the news finally came, the operations center filled with applause, cheers and laughter.