NASA to Attempt First Controlled Flight on Mars As Soon As Monday
PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA is targeting no earlier than Monday, April 19, for the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at approximately 3:30 a.m. EDT (12:30 a.m. PDT).
Data from the first flight will return to Earth a few hours following the autonomous flight. A livestream will begin at 6:15 a.m. EDT (3:15 a.m. PDT), as the helicopter team prepares to receive the data downlink in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Watch on NASA Television, the agency app, website, and social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.
If the flight takes place April 19, a postflight briefing will be held at 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT).
The participants are:
- Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate
- Michael Watkins, JPL director
- MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL
- Bob Balaram, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter chief engineer at JPL
- Håvard Grip, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter chief pilot at JPL
- Justin Maki, Perseverance Mars rover imaging scientist and deputy principal investigator of Mastcam-Z instrument at JPL
The public and media also may ask questions on social media during the livestream and briefing using #MarsHelicopter.
Find the latest schedule updates at:
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Watch-Online
The original flight date of April 11 shifted as engineers worked on preflight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue. The Perseverance rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.
This technology demonstration is supported by NASA’s Science, Aeronautics Research, and Space Technology mission directorates. JPL, managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations for Ingenuity and the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.
Follow Ingenuity via the @NASA, @NASAJPL, and @NASAMars Twitter accounts; NASA and NASAPersevere Facebook accounts; and NASA Instagram account.
An Ingenuity press kit is available at:
5 responses to “NASA to Attempt First Controlled Flight on Mars As Soon As Monday”
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safe flights
Rovers are great, for local exploration. Orbiters are great for the big picture. But drones, particularly more than one, extend reach and situational awareness. Mars is an active planet with interesting things happening just over the hill or down a valley, or in a small crater nearby. Extend the science, and when people get there, extend their reach.
Wishing them the best for a safe flight!
I have no idea why the term reconnaissance mortar round popped into my head. 120 m/s muzzle velocity would give about a minute of altitude on Mars. Camera, battery, transmitter, and light aero shell massing how many grams with modern tech? 1,800 meters max altitude vs ?? for the chopper.
Not a serious suggestion, just a random thought.
Could actually be a useful idea, though maybe more like a Katyusha than a mortar. Particularly if equipped with a metal cap that slides sideways to expose the sensing elements, then closes back up again to prevent damage to the optics when it augers back in. Build these tough enough and they could be recovered. With all the perchlorates in the Martian soil, it might prove possible to locally produce re-load propellant for them too – sort of like the bigger model rocket-class solid motors.