NASA copter makes historic Martian flight
10-foot hop a journey like none before
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — 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 copter even carried a bit of wing fabric from the Wright Flyer that made similar history at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903.
It was a brief hop — just 39 seconds and 10 feet — but it accomplished major milestones.
“Goosebumps. It looks just the way we had tested,” project manager MiMi Aung said as she watched the flight video during a later briefing. “Absolutely beautiful flight. I don’t think I can ever stop watching it over and over again.”
Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California declared success after receiving the data and images via the
Perseverance rover. Ingenuity hitched a ride to Mars on Perseverance, clinging to the rover’s underside when it touched down in an ancient river delta in February.
The $85 million helicopter was considered high risk, yet high reward.
Scientists cheered the news from around the world, even from space, and the White House offered its congratulations.
“A whole new way to explore the alien terrain in our solar system is now at our disposal,” Nottingham Trent University astronomer Daniel Brown said from England.
This first test flight — with more to come by Ingenuity, the next as soon as Thursday — holds great promise, Brown noted. Future helicopters could serve as scouts for rovers, and eventually astronauts, in difficult, dangerous places.
Ingenuity has provided a third dimension to planetary exploration and “freed us from the surface now forever,” said Jet Propulsion Laboratory director, Michael Watkins.
Ground controllers had to wait more than three hours before learning whether the preprogrammed flight had succeeded 178 million miles away. The first attempt had been delayed a week because of a software error.
Havard Grip, the engineer who serves as NASA’s chief pilot for Ingenuity, announced as the data arrived that the helicopter had completed “the first powered flight of a powered aircraft on another planet.”
When the news finally came, the operations center filled with applause, cheers and laughter. More followed when the first black and white photo from Ingenuity appeared, showing the helicopter’s shadow as it hovered above the surface of Mars.
“The shadow of greatness, #MarsHelicopter first flight on another world complete!” NASA astronaut Victor Glover tweeted from the International Space Station.
Next came color video of the copter’s clean landing, taken by Perseverance, “the best host little Ingenuity could ever hope for,” Aung said in thanking everyone.
The helicopter hovered for 30 seconds at its intended altitude of 10 feet, and spent 39 seconds airborne.
To accomplish all this, the helicopter’s twin, counter-rotating rotor blades needed to spin at 2,500 revolutions per minute — five times faster than on Earth. With an atmosphere just 1% the density of Earth’s, engineers had to build a helicopter light enough — with blades spinning fast enough — to generate this otherworldly lift. The Martian wind was relatively gentle Monday: between 4 mph and 14 mph.
More than six years in the making, Ingenuity is just 19 inches tall, a spindly fourlegged chopper. Its fuselage, containing all the batteries, heaters and sensors, is the size of a tissue box. The carbon-fiber, foam-filled rotors are the biggest pieces: Each pair stretches 4 feet tip to tip.
Ingenuity also had to be sturdy enough to withstand the Martian wind, and is topped with a solar panel for recharging the batteries, crucial for surviving the minus-130 degree Fahrenheit Martian nights.
NASA chose a flat, relatively rock-free patch for Ingenuity’s airfield. After Monday’s success, NASA officials said they have named the airstrip where Ingenuity took off and landed Wright Brothers Field.
“While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and … million miles of space, they now will forever be linked,” NASA’s science missions chief Thomas Zurbuchen announced.
“We can now say we’ve flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” Aung told the occupants of the flight control room, all masked to protect against the coronavirus. “We together flew on Mars. We together have our Wright brothers moment.”
She added: “We don’t know from history what Orville and Wilbur [Wright] did after their first successful flight. But I imagine the two brothers hugged each other. Well, you know, I’m hugging you virtually.”
Aung told her team to celebrate the moment. “And then after that, let’s get back to work and more flights,” she said.
MORE FLIGHTS
With the first trip’s success, up to four more flights could be attempted. The first three, including Monday’s, are designed to test basic abilities of the helicopter. The second, which could occur as soon as Thursday, is to rise to an altitude of 16 feet and then travel horizontally about 50 feet before returning to its original location.
The third flight could fly a distance of 160 feet and then return. Grip said the team had not decided on plans for the final two flights. “What we’re talking about here is going higher, going further, going faster, stretching the capabilities of the helicopter in those ways,” he said.
Aung said she thought Ingenuity would squeeze in the remaining four flights over the next two weeks. She also wanted to push Ingenuity to its limits and for the last flight to travel 600 or 700 meters — or up to 2,300 feet.
“I’m being more cautious here,” Grip responded, a bit hesitantly.
Ingenuity’s team has until the beginning of May to complete the test flights so that the rover can get on with its main mission: collecting rock samples that could hold evidence of past Martian life, for return to Earth a decade from now.
The team plans to test the helicopter’s limits, possibly even wrecking the craft, leaving it to rest in place forever, having sent its data back home.
‘GET TO THE CHOPPER’
The little chopper with a giant job attracted attention from the moment it launched with Perseverance last July. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger joined in the fun, rooting for Ingenuity over the weekend. “Get to the chopper!” he shouted in a tweeted video, a line from his 1987 sci-fi film “Predator.”
Just before Perseverance launched to Mars in June last year, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator at the time, said, “I’ll tell you, the thing that has me the most excited as an NASA administrator is getting ready to watch a helicopter fly on another world.”
John Grotzinger, a professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology and formerly project scientist for Curiosity, an earlier Mars rover that arrived in 2012, said he was also a fan of Ingenuity.
“This is a really viable way to go about exploring the planet because you can cover so much area,” Grotzinger said.
In addition to Perseverance, two other new visitors also arrived at the red planet from Earth this year.
China’s Tianwen-1 probe entered orbit in February. As early as late May, it will release a lander and rover that will try to reach the surface of the red planet. If it succeeds, it will be China’s first successful touchdown on another planet — it has landed on the moon three times already.
The United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe also arrived at Mars two months ago. After a firing of its thrusters on March 29, it has entered into an orbit where it can begin a close study of the planet’s atmosphere and weather. That phase of scientific research was scheduled to begin Wednesday last week.