NASA's Mars helicopter takes flight, 1st for another planet

NASAs experimental Mars helicopter rose from the dusty red surface into the thin air Monday achieving the first powered controlled flight on another planet The triumph was hailed as a Wright Brothers moment The mini 4pound 18kg copter named Ingenuity in fact carried a bit of wing fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer which made similar history at Kitty Hawk North CarolinaldquoWe can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet project manager MiMi Aung announced to her team Flight controllers in California confirmed Ingenuitys brief hop after receiving data via the Perseverance rover which stood watch more than 200 feet 65 metres away Ingenuity hitched a ride to Mars on Perseverance clinging to the rovers belly upon their arrival in an ancient river delta in FebruaryThe 85 million helicopter demo was considered high risk yet high reward ldquoEach world gets only one first flightrdquo project manager MiMi Aung noted earlier this month Speaking on a NASA webcast early Monday she called it the ldquoultimate dreamrdquoAung and her team had to wait more than three excruciating hours before learning whether the preprogrammed flight had succeeded 178 million miles 287 million kilometres away Adding to their anxiety A software error prevented the helicopter from lifting off a week earlier and had engineers scrambling to come up with a fixApplause cheers and laughter erupted in the operations centre when success was finally declared There was even more when the first black and white photo appeared on the screens showing Ingenuitys shadow as it hovered above the surface of Mars Next came the stunning colour images of the helicopter descending back to the surface taken by Perseverance resulting in even more applauseDetails were initially sparse but NASA had been aiming for a 40second flight The helicopter was supposed to rise 10 feet 3 metres hover for up to 30 seconds then pivot toward the rover and land close to where it took offTo accomplish all that the helicopters twin counterrotating rotor blades needed to spin at 2500 revolutions per minute mdash five times faster than on Earth With an atmosphere just 1 per cent the thickness of Earths engineers had to build a helicopter light enough mdash with blades spinning fast enough mdash to generate this otherworldy lift At the same time it had to be sturdy enough to withstand the Martian wind and extreme coldMore than six years in the making Ingenuity is a barebones 16 feet 05 metres tall a spindly fourlegged chopper Its fuselage containing all the batteries heaters and sensors is the size of a tissue box The carbonfibre foamfilled rotors are the biggest pieces Each pair stretches 4 feet 12 metres tip to tipThe helicopter is topped with a solar panel for recharging the batteries crucial for its survival during the minus130 degree Fahrenheit minus90 degreeCelsius Martian nightsNASA chose a flat relatively rockfree patch for Ingenuitys airfield measuring 33 feet by 33 feet 10 metres by 10 metres It turned out to be less than 100 feet 30 metres from the original landing site in Jezero CraterThe helicopter was released from the rover onto the airfield on April 3 Flight commands were sent Sunday after controllers sent up a software correction for the rotor blade spinupThe little chopper with a giant job attracted attention from around the world from the moment it launched with Perseverance last July until now Even Arnold Schwarzenegger joined in the fun rooting for Ingenuity over the weekend via TwitterldquoGet to the chopperrdquo he shouted reenacting a line from his 1987 scifi film ldquoPredatorrdquoUp to five helicopter flights are planned each one increasingly ambitious If successful the demo could lead the way to a fleet of Martian drones in decades to come providing aerial views transporting packages and serving as scouts for astronauts Highaltitude helicopters here on Earth could also benefit mdash imagine choppers easily navigating the HimalayasIngenuitys team has until the beginning of May to complete the test flights Thats because the rover needs to get on with its main mission collecting rock samples that could hold evidence of past Martian life for return to Earth a decade from nowUntil then Perseverance will keep watch over Ingenuity Flight engineers affectionately call them Percy and Ginny ldquoBig sisters watchingrdquo said Malin Space Science Systems Elsa Jensen the rovers lead camera operatorThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever