NASA recently announced its experimental Ingenuity Mars helicopter is scheduled to take its much-awaited initial test flight on the Red Planet this coming Sunday.
An NBC News report said that if the scheduled first flight succeeds, it will be the first powered, controlled flight piloted on another planet.
In connection to this space development, the report said that on a flat, barren expanse of Martian real estate, a small helicopter is poised to create a history in the aviation industry.
According to Ingenuity helicopter's project manager Mimi Aung, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, the moment that their team has been waiting for "is almost here."
Describing the project, Aung said, they began with an important question: if it is indeed possible to fly a helicopter on Mars.
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In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet's surface as NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away.
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
This tiny helicopter's first outing, the NBC News said, has been reported to have drawn comparisons to the December 1903 event when Orville and Wilbur Wright reached completion of their first powered and controlled flight on Earth.
Although the brothers took turns as they made several flights that day, Orville was the one in control when the milestone was set, with a 120-feet flight in 12 seconds into icy headwinds close to Kitty Hawk North Carolina.
In March, NASA revealed that a postage-stamp-size swatch of fabric from the first airplane of the Wright brothers, the 1903 Wright Flyer, was attached to a cable underneath the solar panel of Ingenuity.
The tiny, four-pound helicopter hitched a ride to Mars with the Perseverance rover, which, a similar report from The Wall Street Journal said, touched down on February 18 in a Mars area called Jezero Crater.
Weeks following the landing, Perseverance transported Ingenuity to its 'airfield,' the Martian landscape's 33-foot-by-foot patch.
The Test Flight
On Sunday, the Ingenuity Mars helicopter will attempt to fly in the thin atmosphere of Mars for the first time. During the test flight, expected to last for a maximum of 30 seconds, the helicopter will climb to 10 feet above the surface of Mars, hovering for up to 30 seconds before it touches again, NASA said.
While the brief excursion may appear simple, gravity on the red planet is one-third of the Earth's, and Mars's atmosphere and is just one percent as dense as the atmosphere of Earth. All combined, it would make the controlled flight more challenging. On top of that, the Martian environment is described to be a harsh and unforgiving place.
Aung said that it has very cold at night. The vehicle sent to Mars, the project manager added, needs to survive cold nights on its own. It needs to charge itself, and the winds are quite a new experience.
Engineers, Flight Controllers to Deal with Communication Lag
Engineers, as well as flight controllers, need to deal with a communication lag. Meaning, NASA won't be able to know how the Ingenuity Mars helicopter performed, not to mention, if it even survives, until Monday morning.
If this first outing is considered a success, NASA may attempt more experimental flights, taking Ingenuity out to farther distances. The space agency said that the tiny helicopter is designed to operate on Mars for roughly 31 days.
NASA has also said that small helicopters could be pioneering for future expeditions to Mars, as well as for other planetary science missions.
In a statement, director of the Planetary Science Division, Lori Glaze at NASA headquarters said that Ingenuity could expand further at the horizons and broaden the scope of what's possible with the exploration of Mars.
And, after almost two months of checking the tiny helicopter's instruments and conducting tests, NASA is now getting ready to kick off the two-year mission of Perseverance to roam the Red Planet's surface and look for signs of ancient microbial life.
A similar report is shown on iGadgetPro's YouTube video below:
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