Mars Ingenuity – First Ever Vehicle To Fly on Mars?
With “Perseverance” and its landing back at the end of February, there was also a small friend brought to the Martian surface called “Ingenuity”.
WHAT IS INGENUITY?
Ingenuity is a small helicopter that is going to make the first powered and fully controlled atmospheric flight on any other planet than Earth. It’s going to be a technology demonstrator for the potential use of flying probes on other worlds. It also provides data on how helicopters can be used for potential scouting locations of interest or future routes for Mars rovers.
THE FIRST FLIGHT
The first flight attempt was planned for April 11th, 2021 but due to a software problem it was postponed and set to a date not earlier than April 14th, 2021. The team needed to send a new software version from Earth to Mars in order to make this flight happen.
I mean they just send a software update over 500 million km to another planet – how fricking crazy is this?
Each flight is planned to fly at altitudes ranging from 3–5 m (10–16 ft) above the ground for up to 90 seconds each. It will use autonomous control during its short flights, although flights will be telerobotically planned and scripted by operators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Fun Fact: A small piece of the wing covering from the Wright brothers' 1903 Wright Flyer, the first powered aircraft on Earth, is attached to a cable underneath Ingenuity's solar panel.
In 1969 Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong carried a similar Wright Flyer artifact to the Moon in the Lunar Module Eagle.
DO YOU THINK INGENUITY WILL SUCCESSFULLY FLY ON THE FIRST PLANET OTHER THAN EARTH AND GIVE NEW DATA FOR FUTURE FLYING PROBES OR DRONES? DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE LITTLE HELICOPTER ON THE SURFACE OF MARS?
This blog post was originally published in our Telescope Live Community.
The Community represents Telescope Live's virtual living room, where people exchange ideas and questions around astrophotography and astronomy.
Join the conversation now to find out more about astrophotography and to improve your observation and post-processing skills!
