Editor’s note: This story will be updated periodically.
A helicopter just flew on Mars. NASA’s Ingenuity hovered for about 40 seconds above the Red Planet’s surface, marking the first flight of a spacecraft on another planet.
In the wee hours on April 19, the helicopter spun its carbon fiber rotor blades and lifted itself into the thin Martian air. It rose about three meters above the ground, pivoted to look at NASA’s Perseverance rover, took a picture, and settled back down to the ground.
As data from the flight started coming in to Ingenuity’s mission control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., at about 6:35 a.m. EDT, a hush fell. And then cheers erupted as Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s guidance, navigation and control lead, announced: “Confirmed that Ingenuity has performed its first flight, the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet.”