NASA Sets Target Date for Mars Helicopter Flight

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA announced on Tuesday a target date for the first powered flight by an aircraft on another planet.

The small helicopter known as Ingenuity is expected to lift-off from the surface of Mars no earlier than Thursday, April 8. The copter remains attached to the belly of NASA’s new rover Perseverance, receiving electricity, warmth, and a ride to its launch zone.

NASA will have only one month to perform a series of flights once the copter is dropped from the rover’s belly. It’s deployment next week will start a 30 day clock on how long the team will have to fly the craft.

Deployment of the helicopter will take six days, four hours to complete. The tissue box-size aircraft will be cut loose on day six and drop five inches onto the Martian surface.

“Ingenuity is an experimental engineering flight test – we want to see if we can fly at Mars,” Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung explained on Tuesday. “There are no science instruments onboard and no goals to obtain scientific information.”

Scientific and Historic Significance

Once NASA controllers are ready to fly Ingenuity, updated information will be relayed to Perseverance. The rover will then relay those new commands to the helicopter.

If the Martian winds are within limits, Ingenuity’s twin rotors will rotate up to 2,537 rpm. The copter will then lift-off and rise at three feet per second.

It will then hover at an altitude of 10 feet for 30 seconds on this first flight. The craft will then descend to a landing in a planned zone.

NASA understands the significance of this historic first flight. When Ingenuity takes-off, it will carry a small section of fabric from the wing of the Wright Brothers’ Flyer 1 aircraft.

Like the 1903 Wright Flyer, Ingenuity is expected to perform a series of first flights. Each flight longer in duration and higher than the previous.

Apollo 11 flew a different piece of the material and a splinter of wood from Flyer 1 to the Moon. It is currently on location at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

“Mars is hard,” said Aung. “Our plan is to work whatever the Red Planet throws at us the very same way we handled every challenge we’ve faced over the past six years – together, with tenacity and a lot of hard work, and a little Ingenuity.”

(Charles A Atkeison reports on aerospace and technology. Follow his Mars Ingenuity updates via social media @Military_Flight.)