NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is commemorating the first powered flight on Mars as its Ingenuity helicopter went into the Marian sky, floated in the sky for a moment, then easily came back to the dusty surface.
On Monday morning, the controlled flight ascended to an altitude of around three meters on its maiden craft, went on a ride to another planet (Mars) with Nasa’s Perseverance rover, which hit in Feb on a task to find out the signs of life on the planet.
The accomplishment has ended with applause and cheers at mission control, where researchers revealed photos taken from the flight’s camera that caught the shadow on the Martian soil.
The Ingenuity project manager at NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), MiMi Aung, said that they can now say that humans have flown a rotorcraft on Mars. Moreover, ahead of the mission reached on another planet, MiMi Aung described to the news outlet, the Guardian, that the 1.8 Kilogram flight could clear the path for the future flight that scout prior to the robotic rovers to explore Martian soil beyond their reach.
Source: Web
The flight is a new sight into the future missions
The flight is a part of a tech demonstration, a mission that intends to test a new skill for the first time. The head of space instrumentation at the Open University, Manish Patel, said that the craft was a sight into the future of Mars plans. He described that this is an amazing feat of engineering brilliance that clears the way to a brave new world of exploration and science possibilities.
He continued that they have explored the orbit of Mars, Mars surface, and at this time, Nasa has conquered the atmosphere. Furthermore, Patel added that this is one small craft for Ingenuity, but one big leap for Mars exploration.
The solar powered flight’s forty-second craft marked a twenty-first-century Wright brothers moment for NASA, which describe victory could clear the path for novel methods of exploration on mars and many other destinations in the solar system and on Mars, like Venus and Saturn’s moon Titan.
NASA’s associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen, described that the airfield on which the craft took place will be called Wright Brothers Field. Besides this, he described that now, 117 years after the Wright brothers got the victory in creating the first craft on our planet, Nasa’s helicopter got the victory in performing this astounding feat on another world.
