NASA successfully flies Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

NASA has announced that it has successfully flown its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on the Red Planet. The event is historical as it’s the first time that humans have performed a powered, controlled flight on another planet.

The flight was controlled by the Ingenuity team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The aircraft first flew at 3:34 a.m. EDT (12:34 a.m. PDT) but due to the data having to travel 178.9 million miles, the confirmation of the flight was not received until 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).

Commenting on the news, acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said:

“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible. The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today’s results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.”

According to NASA, the craft flew to a height of 3 meters, hovered for 30 seconds and then touched down on the surface with the total flight lasting just 39.1 seconds. While the agency has received some data already, it is still waiting for other portions to travel across the Deep Space Network. The Martian airfield from where Ingenuity took off has been named Wright Brothers Field by NASA tying today’s event to the Wright Brothers who flew the first aircraft here on Earth in 1903.

Ingenuity is currently on the 16th sol (Martian day) of its 30-sol (31-Earth day) flight test window. NASA said it will continue to receive information on the test flight over the next three sols and then will decide how to conduct a second experimental test flight. It said that no more flights will be conducted before April 22 but it does hope to conduct several more over the craft’s lifetime.