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NASA Ingenuity helicopter completes historic first flight on Mars

By Oliver Johnson | April 19, 2021

Estimated reading time 7 minutes, 15 seconds.

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has completed its first flight on Mars, becoming the first aircraft to achieve powered flight on another planet in an achievement labelled a “Wright Brothers moment” by the program’s team.

These screen captures, taken by a video recorded by NASA's Perseverance rover, show the Ingenuity aircraft on the ground (top) and performing its first flight (bottom).
These screen captures, taken from a video recorded by NASA’s Perseverance rover, show the Ingenuity aircraft on the ground (top) and performing its first flight (bottom).

In the early hours of April 19 (EST), the four-pound technology demonstrator took off and hovered a few feet in the thin Martian air for 39.1 seconds, before making a soft return to the ground.

News of the flight broke as engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, analyzed data sent from the aircraft, which completed the flight about three hours before the data arrived. A live video stream of the team unpacking the data showed joyous scenes at the JPL, as they celebrated the historic moment.

“We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity at JPL.

“”We’ve been talking for so long about our Wright Brothers moment on Mars, and here it is.”

A black and white photo sent from Ingenuity showed the aircraft’s shadow on the Martian surface below it, while a short video recorded by the nearby Perseverance rover showed the aircraft performing what appears to be an extremely stable hover before returning to the ground.

The view from Ingenuity, capturing its shadow on the Martian ground below. NASA Photo

The challenges facing NASA in designing an aircraft to fly on Mars have been significant, most notably the planet’s extremely thin atmosphere (just one percent of Earth’s), which means there is precious little air against which to generate lift. In Earth terms, it would be like trying to fly at 100,000 feet (30,480 meters).

To allow Ingenuity to fly, NASA has made it extremely light, with two sets of very large counter-rotating blades that spin very fast (around 2,500 rpm — compared to helicopter blades that generally spin at 400 to 500 rpm).

The paddle-shaped blades span about four feet (1.2 meters) creating a large rotor disc for such a small aircraft.

Ingenuity is scheduled to perform five flights during its 30-sol (a Martian day — which is about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth) flight test campaign.

The second test will see the aircraft take off, hover, fly to one side for a few meters, fly back, and land in the same spot. Ingenuity will fly a little further away on its third flight, capturing images as it moves along the flight path. The plans for the fourth and fifth flights will be released nearer the time.

The Ingenuity helicopter, shown on the surface of Mars in this photo taken by the Perseverance rover. NASA Image
The Ingenuity helicopter, shown on the surface of Mars in this photo taken by the Perseverance rover. NASA Image

Ultimately, Ingenuity should be able to fly for up to 90 seconds at a time, to distances of almost 980 feet (300 meters), at an altitude of 10 to 15 feet (three to 4.5 meters).

In between each flight, the aircraft will be charging its lithium-ion batteries through a solar panel mounted above its rotor blades.

The aircraft arrived on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021, having completed the seven-month journey to Mars securely attached to the belly of the car-sized Mars Perseverance rover. The rover deployed Ingenuity on April 3, having identified a suitable flight test site on a flat part of Mars’s Jezero Crater.

Once Perseverance had delicately unfolding Ingenuity and allowed it to drop the last few inches to the ground, the rover drove about 100 meters away to record the aircraft’s flight test campaign.

Meanwhile, Ingenuity began charging its batteries through its solar panels and preparing its systems for flight. A first attempt at a “spin test” — during which the aircraft’s four counter-rotating blades were spun at the speed required for flight — ended early due to a minor software glitch.

In this gif, Ingenuity completes a slow spin of its blades on April 8. Courtesy of NASA
In this gif, Ingenuity completes a slow spin of its blades on April 8. Courtesy of NASA

However, Ingenuity passed a second attempt at the spin test on April 16, paving the way for the first flight three days later.

For more information about the Ingenuity program, read our full report here.

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