NASA’s Mars ingenious helicopter made this blow as it hovered over the Martian surface on April 19, 2021.
NASA / JPL-CalTech
Humanity’s first flight to another planet was short, but it was super sweet. On Monday, NASA released the full video and additional photos submitted by Rover of perseverance on Mars of his companion, a small helicopter called Ingeniousness, in action.
“This is indeed a Wright Brothers moment,” NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk told a news briefing on Monday.
1.8 kg (4 kg) solar powered airplane raised from the floor of Jezero Crater at 12:34 am PT (3:34 am ET), climbed to a height of 10 meters (3 meters), made a 96-degree turn in the air and maintained a stable float for 30 seconds. Then it reached almost exactly the same place after a total of 39 seconds of flight.
The whole thing is captured in the video above, recorded with a resolution of 1,280×720 Mastcam-Z camera on Perseverance from the point of view of the rover, about 64.3 meters away.
“It’s pushing a little bit in the wind,” explains Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot, reviewing the video on Monday, “and it blocked the landing.”
A black and white navigation camera facing down on Ingenuity also captured some images during the flight.
Grip announced that the International Civil Aviation Organization has assigned Ingenuity an official designator, IGY, and the location of the flight has the ceremonial name JZRO for Jezero Crater.
Meanwhile, NASA named the location of the first flight of Ingenuity Wright Brothers Field, in honor of the iconic American flight pioneers.
Ingeniousness made the long journey to Mars in the belly of Perseverance and it was fell on the Martian surface on April 3, a few weeks after the rover landed on February 18th.
Monday’s short plan is expected to be the first of at least a handful of flight attempts for the small helicopter.
MiMi Aung ingenuity project manager he says he hopes to catch four more flights in the remaining two weeks in his experimental flight window. She said the flights would be aimed at expanding the car’s capabilities to go further and faster.
“We will push the envelope,” Aung said, adding that his team will continue to review all data before the next flight attempt, but that the current target for Ingenuity’s next test is Thursday.
When asked if the final fate of ingenuity could be a collapse, she replied: “Finally, we expect the helicopter to reach its limit.”
Stay tuned. Things are just starting to heat up on the frozen red planet now, when humanity’s space robots are no longer on the ground.
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