NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity has just written aviation history and his robot buddy has captured everything on video.
Early this morning (April 19) Ingenuity has the first-ever powered flight on a world outside of EarthThe 4-pound. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter increased by 10 feet (3 meters) above the floor of the Jezero Crater, remained 39 seconds in the thin air of Mars and came down for an accurate landing on the starting place.
And we have high-definition documentation of this otherworldly Wright Brothers moment thanks to NASAs Perseverance, which recorded the flight from 70 meters away using its powerful Mastcam-Z camera system.
“Absolutely beautiful flight!” Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung said at a press conference today that detailed the historic flight and revealed the video from Perseverance.
“I do not think I can ever stop to look forward to,” added Aung, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
Video: Watch Ingenuity’s maiden flight on Mars
A helicopter on Mars
Ingenuity ended with perseverance in Jezero on February 18 and deployed from the abdomen of the robber at the beginning of this month. The solar powered helicopter has two cameras but no scientific instruments. It is a technology demonstration designed to show that powered flight is possible on Mars, which has an atmosphere only 1% as thick as Earth’s at sea level.
The main task of perseverance is to look for signs of antiquity Life on Mars and collect and cache samples for future returns to Earth, but the rover won’t really begin that work until Ingenuity’s month-long flight campaign comes to an end. Persistence documents that campaign and supports it in crucial ways. For example, all communications to and from the solar-powered helicopter are routed through the rover.
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Aung and her colleagues plan to in the two weeks they still have to conduct four flights in the campaign, with number two tentatively scheduled for Thursday (April 19). (The clock started ticking when Ingenuity was deployed from Perseverance, and the helicopter’s maiden flight was delayed about a week when the team worked to fix a software problem
Those flights will become increasingly complex and ambitious, with the team Ingenuity flying higher, farther and faster as time goes on.
“This is a scout,” Aung said. “We really want to know what the boundaries are, so we will consciously push the boundaries.”
She said she would like Ingenuity to travel about 600 meters down on her fifth and final flight, provided the helicopter performs well on flights two through four. It is unclear where the Ingenuity will take off last, but it is possible that the long flight will help plan the wandering routes of Perseverance; Aung said she is agnostic about the flight direction and will ask the rover team if she has any preferences.
Related: How NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity can fly on the Red Planet
The future of flying off the planet
Such exploration work, if indeed done, would serve as an appropriate bridge to the future that helps unlock Ingenuity – a future where aerial exploration of Mars is common and helicopters perform a variety of important tasks on the Red Planet.
“What the Ingenuity team has done gives us the third dimension,” JPL Director Mike Watkins said at today’s press conference.
“They have now freed us from the surface forever in planetary exploration, so that we can now naturally combine surface driving and surface sampling and exploration and even scientifically experiment in places inaccessible to a rover,” he added. “And I think this is exactly how we are building the future.”
Mike Wall is the author of “Outside(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the quest for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.