Launch site designated 'Wright Brothers Field' honouring inventors of world's first successful motor-operated airplane.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter hovers over the Martian surface | Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter successfully took flight and landed back on the Red Planet on Monday, 19 April 2021. It is the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet.
Ingenuity climbed to an altitude of 3 meters and maintained altitude for 30 seconds. It then descended, touching back down on the surface of Mars after a total 39.1 seconds of flight.
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.
“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,” Zurbuchen said.
As one of NASA’s technology demonstration projects, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter contains no science instruments inside its tissue-box-size fuselage. The 1.8 kg craft is intended to demonstrate whether future exploration of Mars could include an aerial perspective.
On 22 April 2021 Ingenuity completed its second successful Mars flight. Climbing to 5 meters, a higher altitude than during the initial flight, the second flight lasted 51.9 seconds with Ingenuity also successfully completing a sideways movement — its flight control system performed a 5-degree tilt, then moving the craft 2 meters sideways.
