NASA helicopter Ingenuity makes successful first flight on Mars

Mars helicopter Ingenuity has successfully completed its first test flight. The small helicopter ascended as planned to a height of three meters and hovered for forty seconds. NASA will be testing Ingenuity for a month.

Ingenuity has during his test flight has took a black and white photo. It shows the shadow of the helicopter as it hovers over the Martian surface. The camera is a navigation aid; Using a stored database of the planet’s surface and image recognition, Ingenuity can navigate.

Mars rover Perseverance, which brought Ingenuity to the red planet, captured footage of the helicopter’s test flight. Space agency NASA shares a gif of it on Twitter. The high-resolution images have not yet been received; they will arrive in the next few days.

Taking off a helicopter on Mars is much more complicated than on Earth because of the thin air. The air pressure is about one percent of the air pressure on Earth. That’s why Ingenuity features twin rotors spinning at 2400rpm. With helicopters on Earth, that’s about 500rpm. Ingenuity weighs 1.8 kg and has a wingspan of 120 centimeters. The helicopter works on solar energy and a single battery charge is good for about 90 seconds of flight. Charging takes four to five days.

During a month, several test flights will be conducted with Ingenuity. The distance traveled and the height will increase. If all goes well, the helicopter should eventually complete a flight of three hundred meters with a height of up to five meters.

Ingenuity was sent along with the Mars 2020 mission as an experiment. The goal is to see if it is possible to fly on Mars. Lessons learned can be used for later missions. The small helicopter is not part of the mission and has no research tasks.

Ingenuity on the Martian surface and photo taken by Ingenuity of its own shadow during the test flight.