Great news – NASA’s Ingenuity the Mars helicopter performs its first flight. It is the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity made history today by being the first craft to achieve controlled, powered flight on a planet beyond Earth.
Below you can see the first images: Left, the point of view from Ingenuity the Mars helicopter (its shadow on the ground). Right, the view from the Perseverance rover.
The first video of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in flight
In the video below, captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took the first powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021.
The rover was parked at “Van Zyl Overlook,” about 211 feet (64.3 meters) away in Mars’ Jezero Crater, and chronicled the flight operations with its cameras.
These images from the rover’s Mastcam-Z cameras show the helicopter hovering above the Red Planet’s surface. During this first flight, the helicopter climbed to an altitude of 10 feet (3 meters), hovered, and then touched back down on the surface of Mars.
Ingenuity is a technology demonstration. The 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft will help determine whether future explorations on Mars could include an aerial perspective.
- Opportunity landed on Mars on January 25, 2004 - January 25, 2023
- The first Uranus flyby was performed by Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986 - January 24, 2023
- Neptune became the outermost planet on January 21, 1979 - January 21, 2023
