The Wright Brothers Go To Mars
Shadow of hovering Ingenuity helicopter, Jezero Crater Mars 4-19-2021 (credit: JPL/NASA/CalTech)
On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made several brief flights with their hand-built aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The brothers had invented the first successful airplane.
Today, 118 years later and millions miles away, the inheritors of that tradition at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena conducted their own success of 'first flight', this time on another planet. The small helicopter named Ingenuity briefly hovered in Jezero Crater on Mars. The Lab's aerial robot spun its high-tech rotors and the helicopter lifted off the Martian surface where the Perseverance rover had deposited it before this test flight was attempted.
Mars helicopter Ingenuity (credit: JPL/NASA/CalTech)
The solar-powered copter became airborne at 12:34am PDT, a time the Ingenuity team determined it would have optimal energy and flight conditions. Altimeter data indicated the 4lb winged robotic device climbed to its prescribed maximum height of 10 feet (3 meters) and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It then descended, touching back down on the crater floor for a total flight of 39 seconds. JPL released a brief video of the hovering maneuver.
According to the official announcement, Ingenuity's first flight was packed with unknowns, anyone of which could have doomed the flight demonstration. Mars has significantly lower gravity than Earth, has an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1% the Earth's air pressure at the planet's surface, and is very cold. The helicopter contains unique components, as well as off-the-shelf-commercial parts that were being tested in deep space for the first time as well. The device has gone from ‘blue sky’ concept, to an engineered and workable craft, to showing it could fly on Mars in only six years.
Like the Wright Brothers building their airplane for its own 'first flight' demonstration, this aerial craft achieved its historic flight as a testimony to the innovation and determination of an entire team of scientists and engineers at JPL. It will be exciting to see the imagery and video feeds as Immunity begins its explorations.
WHB