NASA has successfully lifted off a small helicopter on Mars. It also marks the first time a spacecraft has taken off from the Martian surface. The Ingenuity helicopter was airborne for less than a minute, but the space agency is celebrating what shows the first controlled flight by an aircraft on another planet.
The flight was confirmed by a Mars satellite which beamed back the chopper’s data back to Earth. NASA has promised more such flights in the coming days. The chopper will be flown higher and further as engineers plan to push the technology to its limits.
Ingenuity pays tribute to Flyer 1
Ingenuity was ferried to Mars aboard the Perseverance Rover, which landed on the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February. The Perseverance rover will look for signs of early life on the Martian surface. It will also collect samples for scientists to study more about the Red Planet.
“We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity at Nasa’s JPL. “We’ve been talking for so long about our ‘Wright Brothers moment’ on Mars, and here it is.”
Ingenuity also carries a swatch of fabric from the wings of Flyer 1, the historic aircraft that made the flight more than 117 years ago. During the demonstration, the chopper rose to just 3m and then set down. Overall, it managed to stay airborne for around 40 seconds.
The science behind the chopper
Staying in the air on Mars isn’t easy, as the atmosphere is very thin, just 1% of the density of Earth’s atmosphere. This gives the blades very little bite to gain lift. Although lower gravity on Mars is helpful, it still takes a lot of effort to lift off.
That’s the reason behind NASA’s strategy to make this chopper super lightweight. The helicopter has a peak power of 350 watts that make the blades move at 2,500 revolutions per minute.
Ingenuity has two cameras – one is a black-and-white camera pointed towards the ground and helps the chopper navigate. The other camera is a high-resolution sensor that captures the horizon. During the flight, the Perseverance rover was snapping the chopper from a distance of 65m.
