Nasa celebrates maiden helicopter flight on Mars

On Monday morning a little helicopter called Ingenuity rose just three metres above the Martian surface, hovered for half a minute, swivelled and landed again.

Those 40 seconds represented what Nasa engineers called a “Wright Brothers moment” — the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.

Project scientists applauded as altimetry data arrived at mission headquarters, Jet Propulsion Lab in California, confirming the success of Ingenuity’s maiden flight.

They cheered as a black-and-white photo taken downward from the drone showed its shadow on the Martian surface, and again when the helicopter rose, hovered and descended in a colour video recorded by Nasa’s Perseverance rover 70 metres away.

“We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet,” Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung told her colleagues, who were clad in orange T-shirts.

Ingenuity had arrived on Jezero Crater, close to the Martian equator, on February 18 after a seven-month journey from Earth strapped to the belly of Perseverance.

The rover set the 1.8kg helicopter down two weeks ago for pre-flight testing. This showed a failure in the flight control software, which had to be reinstalled last week, adding to the uncertainty over Monday’s first flight, and intensifying mission scientists’ feeling of relief when it succeeded.

Nasa added the $85m Ingenuity project to the $2.7bn Perseverance mission as a high-risk, high-reward technology demonstrator. It is not an essential part of the main scientific programme, which aims to look for signs of past or present microbial life on Mars.

Ingenuity could pave the way for aerial observation and transport on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system. Nasa engineers are already designing a rotor-powered drone called Dragonfly to explore Saturn’s giant moon Titan.

“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,” said acting Nasa chief Steve Jurczyk.

The aerodynamic requirements for flying on the red planet are very demanding. The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin, with a density only 1 per cent of Earth’s, so Ingenuity’s two 1.2m wide rotor blades have to rotate very fast, at 2,500 rpm, to achieve flight. Terrestrial helicopter blades typically spin at less than 500 rpm.

The Ingenuity team will analyse data and imagery from the first flight to plan for a second experimental test, scheduled for no earlier than April 22, which will involve horizontal as well as vertical movement.

An increasingly ambitious series of up to five flights could take place over the next three weeks, supplying data that may help planetary engineers design Martian drones to explore the planet more extensively than is possible with wheeled rovers.

Then, in early May, the Ingenuity project will be finished, and Perseverance can proceed with its primary aim of investigating the rocks and soil around Jezero Crater for any geological or chemical signs of life.