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The small helicopter successfully took flight on the Red Planet on Monday, hovering in the air at about three metres, before descending and touching back down on the Martian surface.
The news was met by applause mission control, with Ingenuity’s chief pilot Håvard Grip announcing: “Ingenuity has performed its first flight – the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet,” and this message was met by cheers and applause at mission control.
“We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We’ve been talking for so long about our Wright brothers moment. And here it is.”
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NASA is targeting early Monday for the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, according to NASA.
The helicopter is scheduled to lift off at approximately 3:30 a.m. Eastern Day Time on Monday.
The first flight was originally scheduled on April 11, but the date shifted as engineers worked on preflight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue.
Ingenuity arrived at Mars Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, attached to the belly of NASA s Perseverance rover. The helicopter is a technology demonstration with a planned test flight duration of up to 30 Martian days.
The Perseverance rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.