This article was updated on April 17.
The first helicopter is expected to attempt its very first flight on Mars on Monday (April 19), and you can follow it all online. The flight has been delayed since April 11.
NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity flight coverage starts at 6:15 am EDT (1015 GMT) on Monday, with a post-flight press conference on 2:00 pm EDT (1800 GMT)You can watch that live on Space.com and on this page, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly from NASA Television, the NASA smartphone app, the agency’s website, and several social media platforms (such as the YouTube and Facebook channels of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.)
Ingenuity, which rode to Mars on the belly of the Perseverance rover, is expected to take off on Monday at 3:30 a.m. EDT (0730 GMT), but data from that flight won’t arrive on Earth until several hours later. . NASAs 6:15 a.m. EDT livestream will cover the arrival of that data with live views from Ingenuity’s control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Video: Watch NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity test its blades!
“The flight date may shift as engineers work on the deployments, preflight checks and vehicle positioning of both persistence and ingenuity,” NASA said in a statement, noting that the timing will be updated on the helicopter’s web page as needed.
“If the helicopter flies… as expected, the live stream will show the helicopter team analyzing the first test flight data in JPL’s Space Flight Operations Facility,” the agency added. Mars is a few minutes at the speed of light from Earth, so Ingenuity will take off autonomously and we will only know what its status is afterwards.
Controllers at JPL are in the midst of a three-month intense start to the ambitious Perseverance mission, working on “Mars Time” to coordinate their internal clocks with the 24-hour and 37-minute “sol” of each Mars day .
They’ve been in this mode since Feb. 18, when Perseverance landed on Mars on a long-term quest to find signs of ancient habitability and to cache promising monsters for a planned future monster return mission. Ingenuity is a test part of the mission and has up to 31 days (30 sols) scheduled flights to test the idea of supporting ground missions with taking photos and collecting data from the air.
There will also be several live stream media briefings in connection with the flight; members of the public can ask questions on social media with the hashtag #MarsHelicopter.
The post-flight briefing on Monday at 2:00 PM EDT (1800 GMT) includes flight data from:
- Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate
- Michael Watkins, JPL Director
- MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Project Manager, JPL
- Bob Balaram, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Chief Engineer at JPL
- Håvard Grip, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Lead Pilot at JPL
- Justin Maki, perseverance Mars rover imaging scientist and deputy principal investigator of Mastcam-Z instrument at JPL
The exact timing of the live streams may shift, so check social media channels for updates.
In addition, NASA is planning two more informal talks called “Taking Flight: How Girls Can Grow Up to Be Engineers” to “help girls and women interested in the field find their way into engineering and offer invitations to special events. events. ” agency declared.
The talks are scheduled for 4:00 pm EDT (9:00 pm GMT) on April 22 and April 29. But the agency stated that exact dates and times could be adjusted after Ingenuity’s maiden flight.
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