NASA’s Helicopter Makes First Flight On Mars

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has conducted the first helicopter flight on planet Mars, it announced Monday.

“Ingenuity has performed its first flight — the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet!” NASA wrote on Twitter, adding data that showed the flight was successful.

NASA pushed back the launch of the first flight on the surface of Mars in March. The Ingenuity helicopter, which was attached to the Perseverance rover, landed on the red planet on Feb. 18, was initially planned for a flight on April 8.

Since Mars has one-third of the Earth’s gravity and an atmosphere just 1% as dense as the Earth’s at the surface, flying Ingenuity in a controlled manner on Mars is more complex than flying on Earth, while energy and temperature change will be issues for the flight, NASA said last month.

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement.

“Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit,” he added.

NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen made a reference to Wright brothers who are credited with inventing and flying the first motor-operated airplane 117 years ago.

“… NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world. While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked,” he said.

Ingenuity’s second experimental test flight is scheduled for no earlier than April 22, after analyzing all data. If it survives the second flight test, its team will consider how to expand its flight profile, according to NASA.