The tears came quickly Monday for Tracy Punsel as she watched the morning news.
While the Cambridge woman slept, Ingenuity, the helicopter on Mars that holds a computer chip developed in part by her late brother, lifted off from the Martian surface.
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The 39-second flight by NASA s experimental helicopter marked the first powered flight by an aircraft on another planet. Hailed as a Wright Brothers moment, the 4-pound aircraft carried a bit of wing fabric from the Wright Flyer that made similar history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight, the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet, said the helicopter s chief pilot back on Earth, Havard Grip, his voice breaking as his teammates erupted in applause.
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February 15, 2021
Artist’s rendering of the Ingenuity copter and Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Jim Willmore never talked too much about his job at Qualcomm, the San Diego-based mobile communications chip maker where he worked for 21 years, most recently as senior director of engineering.
So, it was a total surprise for his mother Betty Willmore and sister Tracy Punsel in 2018 when they learned something incredible about the Madison native and University of Wisconsin-Madison alumnus (BSECE ‘84). Willmore’s name, along with those of his team members, was being inscribed on a small helicopter called Ingenuity being sent to Mars as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission. “That’s all we knew about the project,” says Betty, “but we were very excited.”