On Monday, NASA successfully completed the first controlled flight on another planet when Mars helicopter Ingenuity conducted a short flight in what the space agency described as “a Wright Brothers moment” in space.
“Ingenuity is reported to have performed spin up, takeoff, ascent, hovering, descending, landing and spin down,” the air traffic controller at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a webcast.
NASA planned to fly the spacecraft, which weighs just under two kilograms, for as long as 30 seconds and about 10 meters above the surface of Mars. The helicopter’s rotors spun at over 2,500 rpm, much faster than a helicopter on Earth due to the thin atmosphere on Mars.
The flight was completely autonomous because there is a 15-minute delay in the communication between NASA in California and the surface of the red planet.
The helicopter carried a small piece of fabric from the wing of Flyer 1, the Wright brothers’ aircraft that made the first motor flights on earth in 1903.
