NASA ’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter just became the first vehicle to aviate on Mars and the first powered vehicle to ever fly on another satellite . The picayune fomite rose 3 meters ( 10 feet ) and hover for about 30 second on the control surface of the Red Planet . Ingenuity ’s success opens up a completely new property of robotlike blank geographic expedition for the future .
As a poignant testimonial , a piece of the Wright brothers ' original plane – the first powered aircraft to successfully fly – was localise inside Ingenuity .
The deputation team has received altimetry datum confirm it flew this morning at 6:46 ET . More data , range , and videoswill be send back to Earth .
" We can say human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another satellite , " said MiMi Aung , Ingenuity task managing director at JPL , after the succeeder of the escape was announce .
“ Over the next calendar month , the flights get progressively a little bite more modern . So the first flight of stairs is really our minimal success criteria to say that ‘ yes , we check that box . We can fly!’”Taryn Bailey , a mechanical locomotive engineer on the Ingenuity mission team , distinguish IFLScience .
The military mission team will attempt four more escape after today ’s achiever . The next flight will have Ingenuity do more than just take off , hover , and land – it willmove laterally , and then go further abroad . cleverness remains a technology demonstration , so it is there to just show what we are equal to of doing from a technical point of view . But a succeeding commission might have its own variant of Ingenuity as an invaluable geographic expedition fellow traveler .
April has certainly become the month of inventiveness on Mars . First , the whirlybird dropped to the earth from the abdomen of Perseverence where it was stored for their interplanetary journeying , and it has undergoneseveral testsin training for today ’s first flight . The mental test were needed as the squad discovereda software issuethat require an update and check the flight until today .
Ingenuity ’s first flight is one for the account books , and we ca n’t look to see more flying fomite explore the planets and moon of the Solar System .
