NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which is attached to the Perseverance rover’s belly, contains a small relic of the Wright brothers’ first plane, which took flight more than 100 years earlier.
A small portion of the material from the wings of the Wright brothers’ plane, known as the Flyer, is now on board Ingenuity, which arrived on Mars Feb. 18, NASA revealed in a statement Tuesday.
The small piece of cloth was wrapped with tape around a cable located under the helicopter’s solar panel, the agency wrote.
The Wright brothers, NASA noted, used the same type of material – an unbleached muslin called “Pride of the West” – to cover the glider and airplane wings from 1901 onwards.
While Ingenuity will attempt the first powered controlled flight on another planet, the first powered controlled flight on Earth took place on December 17, 1903, on the windy dunes of Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville and Wilbur Wright covered 36 meters in 12 seconds on the first flight. The Wright brothers made four flights that day, each longer than the last, ”the NASA statement said.
“A small amount of the material that covered one of the wings of the Wright brothers’ plane during the first flight, known as the Flyer, is now on board Ingenuity,” the statement added.
The piece of cloth, the size of a postage stamp, made the 300-million-mile expedition to Mars with the blessing of the Wright brothers’ great-grandniece and great-grandnephew, The Associated Press reported, citing a curator at the Carillon Historical Park. that donated the piece to NASA.
“Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to hear that a small piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the space age by barely a quarter of a mile, will fly back into history on Mars!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement that the park has provided the AP.
Another piece of the material, besides a small sliver of wood from the Wright Flyer, was also on board the July 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon, NASA noted.
Ingenuity is on track to attempt the first powered, controlled flight of an airplane on another planet no earlier than April 8, NASA wrote. Before the Ingenuity can attempt its maiden flight, the helicopter and its team must reach a series of “daunting milestones,” NASA said.
For now, the helicopter will be stuck to Perseverance’s belly, NASA wrote.
On July 30, Perseverance launched into space toward Mars from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to look for signs of past life on the red planet. On February 18, the rover successfully landed on Mars, becoming the fifth rover to be sent by NASA to the red planet.