Watch NASA successfully fly a remote-controlled helicopter on Mars

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/NASA)

published 19 April 2021

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully flew its remote-controlled helicopter on Mars early Monday. "We can now say that human beings have flown a rotor craft on another planet," MiMi Aung, project manager for the Ingenuity helicopter, told her cheering crew after the data confirmed the test flight's success Monday morning. "We have been talking so long about our Wright Brothers moment on Mars, and here it is!"

Ingenuity, a solar-powered helicopter that landed on Mars on the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover, flew 10 feet into the air, hovered for about 20 seconds, then landed, JPL confirmed. Ingenuity's down-facing camera transmitted a black-and-white photo of its shadow on the Martian surface and Perseverance beamed back color video of the test flight. The proof-of-concept experiment proved that humans can fly aircraft remotely on planets with a tiny fraction of the Earth's atmosphere. A normal helicopter's blades rotate at about 400 revolutions per minute, NASA said, while Ingenuity's spin at about 2,500 rpm to overcome the thin atmosphere.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.