Ingenuity, the mini-helicopter of NASA’s Persevarance mission, made the first controlled flight to Mars. The test lasted a few seconds and was the first demonstration of vertical take-off and landing, reaching a height of about 3 meters.
It is the first time in the history of space exploration that a powered flight is performed on a planet other than Earth and this opens up new scenarios for the future of Martian exploration. It takes ingenuity to fly to Mars and in English its name means ingenuity.
After postponement of last April 11, the long-awaited day has finally arrived. Although the flight was scheduled for about 9:30 this morning, it still took more than three hours to get the necessary data confirming the experiment and the confirmation of the flight arrived with the live of the NASA 12:15 pm (Italian time), during which the engineers of the “Jet Propulsion Laboratory” (JPL) confirmed the success of the operation. It is a mini-helicopter that weighs only about 2 kg. Arrived on Mars last February 18 aboard “Perseverance”, it is equipped with cutting-edge technologies, which allowed it to hover in really difficult flight conditions (just think of the atmosphere of Mars). The helicopter drone, in fact, is equipped with solar cells, batteries and other innovative components, but above all it has 4 carbon fiber blades, arranged on two rotors, which rotate at about 2,400 revolutions per minute, far greater than that necessary to overcoming gravity on Earth, which is 8 times faster than a land-based helicopter to produce the same thrust.
We like to remember that the author of all this is a woman, the scientist of Burmese origin Mi Mi Aung, engineer and project manager at JPL, in charge of the “Mars Helicopter Ingenuity”, the first extraterrestrial aircraft. The news arouses even more attention, given the current situation in Myanmar, her country of origin, to which the scientist is still very attached.