On Monday (April 19, 2021), NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made aviation history by performing the first powered, coordinated flight by an aircraft on an alien planet. After receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT, the Ingenuity team at the organization’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the mission was successful (3:46 a.m. PDT).
“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “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 today’s results indicate the sky at least on Mars may not be the limit.”
At 3:34 a.m. EDT (12:34 a.m. PDT), 12:33 Local Mean Solar Time (Mars time), the solar-powered helicopter first took to the air for the first moment. This was the time the Ingenuity team calculated would have the best energy and flight conditions.
Data from the altimeter show that Ingenuity ascended to its specified maximum height of 10 feet (3 meters) and hovered there for 30 seconds. It subsequently began to descend, returning to the Martian soil after a total of 39.1 seconds of flight. Upcoming downlinks are likely to contain more information about the test.
The first flight demonstration of Ingenuity was autonomously piloted thanks to onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems using JPL team-developed algorithms. Using orbiting satellites and NASA’s Deep Space Network, data must be transferred to and returned from the Red Planet over hundreds of millions of kilometers, making it impossible for Ingenuity to be controlled by a joystick and preventing real-time monitoring of its flight from Earth.
The name of the Martian airstrip where the flight was conducted was revealed by NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen.
“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.”
Hvard Grip, the principal pilot of Ingenuity, declared that NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration have received the official ICAO designator IGY, call-sign INGENUITY, from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations’ civil aviation organization.
The Mars Helicopter project has gone from ‘blue sky’ feasibility study to workable engineering concept to achieving the first flight on another world in a little over six years. That this project has achieved such a historic first is testimony to the innovation and doggedness of our team here at JPL, as well as at NASA’s Langley and Ames Research Centers, and our industry partners. It’s a shining example of the kind of technology push that thrives at JPL and fits well with NASA’s exploration goals.
Michael Watkins
The ICAO publication Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services will formally contain these specifics in its upcoming edition. Additionally, the commemorative place designation JZRO for Jezero Crater has been assigned to the flight’s landing area.
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which stands 19.3 inches (49 centimeters) tall and has a fuselage the size of a tissue box, is one of NASA’s technology demonstration projects. The 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft’s purpose is to show whether or not aerial views of Mars could be included in future exploration.
The unknowns on this initial trip were numerous. The Red Planet has a gravity that is one-third that of Earth and an atmosphere that is incredibly thin, with only 1% of Earth’s surface pressure.
This indicates that the two 4-foot (1.2-meter) broad rotor blades on Ingenuity can interact with comparatively few air molecules to produce flight. The helicopter is made up of both original and commercially available parts, many of which are taken from the smartphone industry and were put to the test in deep space for the first time during this trip.
“The Mars Helicopter project has gone from ‘blue sky’ feasibility study to workable engineering concept to achieving the first flight on another world in a little over six years,” said Michael Watkins, director of JPL. “That this project has achieved such a historic first is testimony to the innovation and doggedness of our team here at JPL, as well as at NASA’s Langley and Ames Research Centers, and our industry partners. It’s a shining example of the kind of technology push that thrives at JPL and fits well with NASA’s exploration goals.”
During the historic inaugural flight of Ingenuity, the Perseverance rover was parked about 211 feet (64.3 meters) away at Van Zyl Overlook. It served as a communications relay between the helicopter and Earth and used its cameras to record the flight operations. Mastcam-Z and Navcam images taken by the rover’s imagers will add more information about the helicopter’s flight.
“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.”
On February 18, Perseverance landed with Ingenuity strapped to its belly. Ingenuity is presently on the 16th sol, or Martian day, of its 30-sol (31-Earth day) flight test window after being deployed to the surface of Jezero Crater on April 3.
The helicopter team will gather, examine, and plan for the second experimental test flight, which is anticipated to take place no early than April 22, during the course of the following three sols. The Ingenuity team will think about the best way to broaden the flight profile if the helicopter makes it through the second flight test.
More about Ingenuity
Ingenuity was created by JPL, which also oversees NASA’s technology demonstration project. The mission directorates for science, aviation, and space technology at NASA support it.
Ingenuity received major flight performance analysis and technical support from the agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, during development.
Dave Lavery is the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, MiMi Aung is the project manager, and Bob Balaram is chief engineer.
More about Perseverance
Astrobiology, including the look for evidence of ancient microbial life, is one of the main goals of Perseverance’s mission on Mars. In addition to opening the path for human exploration of the Red Planet, the rover will be the first mission to gather and store Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Later NASA missions would send spacecraft to Mars in collaboration with the ESA (European Space Agency) to collect these sealed samples from the surface and bring them back to Earth for in-depth investigation. JPL built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California.
