Helicopter takes off from surface of Mars for first time
Nasa’s Ingenuity helicopter completed its first flight on Mars yesterday, in a historic moment for space exploration.
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the helicopter was designed and built, endured a nervous wait as data arrived on Earth after it travelled about 289 million kilometres from Mars.
It showed that Ingenuity lifted off from the surface of Mars as planned, completing a task many compared to the first powered flight on Earth in 1903.
An image taken by one of the helicopter’s onboard cameras showed it hovering above the Red Planet.
The Perseverance rover, which carried Ingenuity to Mars, was positioned near the flight zone in the Jezero Crater to capture more imagery of the test flight, relaying a short video of the helicopter in flight.
The team of engineers behind the Ingenuity celebrated as the data came in.
“We can now say that humans have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” lead engineer MiMi Aung said.
“We’ve been talking so long about our Wright brothers moment on Mars, and here it is.”
An earlier flight attempt was delayed by a software glitch, but engineers were able to solve the problem and instructed the helicopter to take off early yesterday.
The flight plan involved the helicopter climbing to three metres above the surface and hovering for 30 seconds in the thin Martian atmosphere, before landing.
Ingenuity was designed to prove that flight on Mars is possible.
While gravity on Mars is lower than on Earth, the Red Planet’s atmosphere is only 1 per cent of Earth’s, presenting a special challenge for aerodynamic lift.
To compensate, engineers equipped Ingenuity with rotor blades that are larger and spin faster than would be needed on Earth. The design was successfully tested in vacuum chambers built at the Jet Propulsion Lab to simulate Martian conditions.
Ingenuity will undertake several more flights of increasing complexity and length over the next few weeks, between rest periods of four to five days as it recharges its batteries.
Nasa hopes Ingenuity will pave the way for exploration of the planets and moons of the solar system from the “air”.