Helicopter makes first flight ever seen on another world

A small robotic helicopter named Ingenuity made space exploration history on Monday when it lifted off the surface of Mars and hovered. It was the first machine from Earth ever to fly like an airplane or a helicopter on another world.

“We together flew at Mars,” Mimi Aung, NASA’S project manager for Ingenuity, said to her team during the celebration. “And we together now have this Wright brothers moment.”

Like the first flight of an airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright in 1903, the flight did not go far or last long, but it showed what could be done. Flying in the thin atmosphere of Mars was a particularly tricky technical endeavor because there is almost no air to push against. NASA engineers employed ultralight materials, fast-spinning blades and high-powered computer processing to get Ingenuity off the ground.

On Sunday, mission controllers at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California radioed the commands for the test to the Perseverance rover. Perseverance in turn relayed the commands to Ingenuity.

At 3:34 a.m. ET — it was the middle of the Martian day, half an hour past noon — the helicopter spun up its rotors as it had been commanded and rose above Jezero crater, into the Martian sky.

It hovered at a height of some 10 feet for 30 seconds. Then it descended back to the surface.

It was three hours later that one of NASA’S other Mars spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, passed overhead, and Perseverance could relay the test data gathered from the flight through the orbiter back to Earth.

Minutes later, engineers analyzed the data that showed a successful flight.

Soon after, engineers displayed a picture taken by Ingenuity in flight showing its shadow on the ground and then a video by Perseverance of Ingenuity hovering in the air.

With Monday’s success, up to four more flights could be attempted.

NASA plans to wrap up the tests within 30 Martian days of when Ingenuity was dropped off on April 3 so that Perseverance can commence the main portion of its $2.7 billion mission. It will leave the helicopter behind and head toward a river delta along the rim of Jezero crater where sediments, and perhaps chemical hints of ancient life, are preserved.

NASA JPL-CALTECH/ASU/ VIA AP This photograph taken by the Ingenuity helicopter as it hovers 10 feet off the surface of Mars shows the history-making machine’s own shadow as it conducts its first, 30-second flight on Monday.