NASA's Ingenuity helicopter takes first flight on Mars, watch video of 'historic ascent'

In another milestone for humankind, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has successfully made its first flight on Mars. At 6:56 am ET, NASA posted a snippet that showed the mission control team at JPL receiving flight inputs from the ‘marscopter’. "Ingenuity has performed its first flight — the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet!” the American space agency captioned the clip.

In addition to the social media snippet, NASA live-streamed the whole data receiving episode on its YouTube Channel. The nearly an hour-long broadcast also featured the recording sent to earth by Perseverance which shows Ingenuity performing its maiden flight on the red planet. In the aftermath, the American Space agency confirmed that their ‘marscopter’ had successfully completed spin up, takeoff, hover, descend, landing, touchdown and spin down.

The ‘Marscopter’ was initially scheduled to make humankind’s first controlled flight on another planet on April 11, but the venture was stalled owing to a possible technical issue.  However, on April 17, the American Space Agency said that it was “targeting no earlier than Monday, April 19, for the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.”Ingenuity's first flight was initially set for last Sunday but was delayed after a potential issue emerged during a high-speed test of the four-pound (1.8 kilograms) helicopter's rotors. The news was also shared on Twitter by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

All about Ingenuity 

Even though it can be called a ‘helicopter’, the appearance is closer to that of mini-drones. The “small but mighty passenger” aboard Perseverance is named, “Ingenuity, the Mars Helicopter” which weighs about 1.8 kilograms on Earth and has a fuselage about the size of a tissue box. The United States space agency also elaborated that it started out six years ago as an “ implausible prospect”.

Ingenuity is an ‘experimental flight test: NASA has stressed that the ‘Mars Helicopter’ or what known as a technology demonstration is also “a narrowly focused project that seeks to test a new capability for the first time”. It also informed that the helicopter is currently not carrying any science instruments and is not a part of Perseverance’s ‘science mission’.

Image Credits: NASA