This article was updated on April 17.
The first helicopter is expected to attempt its first flight to Mars on Monday (April 19) and you can watch it online. The flight was delayed since April 11.
NASA’s Mars helicopter will ingeniously cover the flight from 6:15 am EDT (1015 GMT) Monday with a post-flight press conference at 14:00 EDT (1800 GMT). You can watch this 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 platforms (such as Jet’s YouTube and Facebook channels). Propulsion Laboratory). )
The ingenuity, which traveled to Mars on the belly of the perseverance rover, is expected to go into the air on Monday at 3:30 am EDT (0730 GMT), but the data from that flight will not reach Earth until a few hours later. . GODMOTHER 6:15 am EDT livestream will cover the arrival of this data with live views from the Ingenuity control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Video: Follow the ingenuity of NASA’s Mars helicopter by testing its blades!
“The flight date may change as engineers work on deployments, flight checks and vehicle positioning for both perseverance and ingenuity,” NASA said in a statement, noting that the timing will be updated on the helicopter’s website. as needed.
“If the helicopter flies … as expected, the live stream will show the helicopter team analyzing the data of the first test flights in JPL’s space flight operations space,” the agency added. Mars is a few minutes away from the speed of light away from Earth, and so ingenuity will reach the air autonomously and we will know about its state only after that.
JPL controllers are in the middle of an intense three-month start to the ambitious mission of perseverance, working on “Mars time” to coordinate their internal clocks with the “ground” of 24 hours and 37 minutes each day. Martian.
It has been this way since February 18, when Perseverance landed on Mars in a long-term search to find signs of ancient housing and to hide promising samples for a future planned mission to return the sample. Ingenuity is a part of mission testing and has up to 31 days (30 messengers) of planned flights to test the idea of supporting ground missions by making images and collecting data from the air.
There will also be several live media briefings associated with the flight; members of the public can ask questions on social networks using the hashtag #MarsHelicopter.
The post-flight briefing on Monday at 14:00 EDT (1800 GMT) will include flight details from:
- Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Scientific Mission Directorate
- Michael Watkins, JPL director
- MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Project Manager, JPL
- Bob Balaram, chief engineer of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at JPL
- Håvard Grip, chief pilot of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at JPL
- Justin Maki, Perseverance Mars rover imaging scientist and deputy chief investigator of the Mastcam-Z instrument at JPL
The exact timing of streaming feeds may change, so keep an eye on social media for updates.
In addition, NASA is planning two more informal discussions called “Taking Flight: How Girls Can Grow to Be Engineers” to “focus on helping girls chart a path to engineering and offer invitations to special events for interested girls and women. domain, ”the agency said.
Discussions are scheduled for 16:00 EDT (2100 GMT) on April 22 and April 29. But the agency said the exact dates and times could be adjusted after Ingenuity’s first flight.
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