Brevard County, USA – On Monday, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history as the the first aircraft to complete a powered, controlled flight on another planet.
“This really is a Wright brothers moment. It’s the start of a whole new kind of planetary exploration,” acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said during a press conference.
“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.”
Flying on Mars is very difficult because the Red Planet only has 1% of earths atmosphere.
“A rotocraft pushes atmosphere to generate lift. When there is that little atmosphere, the roto system has to spin really fast. In fact it spins at over 2,500 revolutions per minute for the flight,” explained Ingenuity’s project manager Mimi Aung.
After a small issue with flight software delayed the historic mission last week, Ingenuity successfully spun up its high-speed blades and lifted about 10 feet off the ground, hovered for 30 seconds and landed safely.
Jurczyk added, “Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible.”
Watch the NASA video here –
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