This year, NASA's "Ingenuity" aircraft made history when it became the first drone to take-off, fly, and land in the atmosphere of another planet.
This year, NASA's "Ingenuity" aircraft made history when it became the first drone to take-off, fly, and land in the atmosphere of another planet.
Last month when a small helicopter named Ingenuity took-off from the surface of Mars, it made history as the first aircraft to fly in the in the atmosphere of another planet. It may have also unlocked future possibilities for how NASA explores the surfaces of distant planets.
Sunday on 60 Minutes, correspondent Anderson Cooper reported on the creation of Ingenuity, and the painstaking multi-year testing and planning process that allowed the drone to fly in the thin atmosphere of the red planet.
NASA s rover Perseverance descends onto Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech It has to be a spacecraft as well as an aircraft, said Ben Pipenberg, a mechanical engineer at AeroVironment, a company that produces drones for military and civilian use. And flying it as an aircraft on Mars is pretty challenging because of the density of the air. It s similar to about Earth at 100,000 feet.