NASA’s Ingenuity team had their Wright Brothers moment in the most thrilling manner with the Mars Helicopter taking its first flight on the red planet and further expanding the horizons in its following three flights. On April 30, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took off for its fourth flight that set records on Mars flying faster and farther than in any tests it went through on Earth. In the fourth flight, the helicopter climbed an altitude of 16 feet before flying south approximately 436 feet and then back for an 872-foot round trip. The rotorcraft was in the air for 117 seconds, as reported by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency). A lot of images have been captured during the flights, providing an aerial perspective of Mars that humanity has never seen before.

The feat achieved by this small rotorcraft, hovering above Jezero Crater, is historic as it showcased that powered, controlled flight on another planet is possible.

The small rotorcraft has been expanding it horizons with every flight it has taken. On April 25, the helicopter took off its third flight rising 16 feet – the same altitude as its second flight and then raced down 164 feet, just over half the length of a football field, reaching a top speed of 6.6 feet per second. Prior to that the second flight was completed on April 22, lasting 51.9 seconds. That flight had added several new challenges to the first, which took place on April 19, including a higher maximum altitude, longer duration, and sideways movement. While the first flight taken by Ingenuity topped out at 10 feet above the surface, Ingenuity climbed to 16 feet the second time. After the helicopter hovered briefly, its flight control system performed a slight (5-degree) tilt, allowing some of the thrust from the counter-rotating rotors to accelerate the craft sideways for 7 feet during the second flight.

In the fourth flight on April 30, the helicopter climbed an altitude of 16 feet before flying south approximately 436 feet and then back for an 872-foot round trip

The video of Ingenuity was captured from by the Mastcam-Z imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, which is serving as a communications base station. The Ingenuity team has been pushing the helicopter’s limits by adding instructions to capture more photos of its own – including from the colour camera, which captured its first images on Flight Two. The helicopter’s blackand-white navigation camera, meanwhile, tracks surface features below. Apart from focusing on the algorithm that tracks surface features, the team needs the correct image exposures as well, dust can obscure the images and interfere with camera performance.

After receiving data from Mars, Ingenuity’s team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California is looking into a pile of information gathered during these flights that will inform not just additional Ingenuity flights but possible Mars rotorcraft in the future not just unmanned but also those with astronauts as NASA is gearing up for the first manned mission to Mars.

“Today’s flight was what we planned for, and yet it was nothing short of amazing. With this flight, we are demonstrating critical capabilities that will enable the addition of an aerial dimension to future Mars missions,” said Dave Lavery, the project’s programme executive for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

On April 25, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter set records in its third flight on Mars as it flew faster and farther than in any tests it went through on Earth

“So far, the engineering telemetry we have received and analysed tell us that the flight met expectations and our prior computer modeling has been accurate. We have more flights of Mars under our belts, which means that there is still a lot to learn during this month of Ingenuity,” Bob Balaram, chief engineer for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at NASA’s JPL said.

Operating an aircraft in a controlled manner at Mars is far more difficult than flying one on Earth but it is certainly worth the challenge. As each second of every flight that Ingenuity takes on Mars, provides an abundance of Mars in-flight data for comparison to the modeling, simulations, and tests performed back here on Earth. Not just that, through these NASA has also gained its first practical experience operating a rotorcraft remotely at Mars. These datasets will further prove invaluable for potential future Mars missions that could enlist next-generation helicopters to add an aerial dimension to their explorations.

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project is a high-risk, highreward technology demonstration, as NASA puts it. The agency further adds that even if Ingenuity were to encounter difficulties during its mission, the sciencegathering of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover mission wouldn’t be impacted.

Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said, “Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible. The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but the results indicate the sky – at least on Mars – may not be the limit.”

Ingenuity’s initial flight demonstration was autonomous – piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by the team at JPL. Because data must be sent to and returned from the Red Planet over hundreds of millions of miles using orbiting satellites and NASA’s Deep Space Network, Ingenuity cannot be flown with a joystick, and its flight was not observable from Earth in real time.

Following the first flight, NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen announced the name for the Martian airfield on which the flight took place. “Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world,” Zurbuchen said. “While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked. As an homage to the two innovative bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that continue to propel exploration.”

Ingenuity’s First Black-and-White Image From the Air

Grip also announced that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) – the United Nations’ civil aviation agency – presented NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration with official ICAO designator IGY, call-sign INGENUITY. These details will be included officially in the next edition of ICAO’s publication Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services. The location of the flight has also been given the ceremonial location designation JZRO for Jezero Crater.

As one of NASA’s technology demonstration projects, the 19.3-inch-tall (49-centimeter-tall) Ingenuity Mars Helicopter contains no science instruments inside its tissue-box-size fuselage. Instead, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft is intended to demonstrate whether future exploration of the Red Planet could include an aerial perspective.

This first flight was full of unknowns, NASA remarks. The Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1 per cent the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-footwide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight. The helicopter contains unique components, as well as off-the-shelf-commercial parts – many from the smartphone industry – that were tested in deep space for the first time with this mission.

“We have been thinking for so long about having our Wright Brothers moment on Mars, and here it is,” said MiMi Aung, project manager of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL. “We will take a moment to celebrate our success and then take a cue from Orville and Wilbur regarding what to do next. History shows they got back to work – to learn as much as they could about their new aircraft – and so will we.”

After successfully proving that powered, controlled flight is possible on the Red Planet, the Ingenuity experiment will soon embark on a new operations demonstration phase, exploring how aerial scouting and other functions could benefit future exploration of Mars and other worlds. This new phase will begin after the helicopter completes one more flight. The decision to add an operations demonstration comes as a result of the Perseverance rover being ahead of schedule with the thorough checkout of all vehicle systems since its landing.

It was February 18 this year that Perseverance touched down Mars with Ingenuity attached to its belly. Deployed to the surface of Jezero Crater on April 3, Ingenuity is currently on the 16th sol, or Martian day, of its 30-sol (31-Earth day) flight test window. Over the next three sols, the helicopter team will receive and analyse all data and imagery from the test and formulate a plan for the next two experimental test flights and consider how best to expand the flight profile. This is to be done before Perseverance heads off on its main mission to look for signs of ancient life in a dried-up river delta.