The Marshelicopter Ingenuity is not yet going to fly around the red planet. The unmanned aircraft was scheduled to make its first short flight on the night from Sunday to Monday, but that event was postponed after a technical problem was revealed during a test. The first helicopter flight on Mars will take place on Wednesday at the earliest.
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In preparation for the first flight, flight control had rotated the helicopter’s rotors on Friday. But that test did not go as planned. The computer in the Ingenuity warned flight controllers that something was wrong. The problem is now being investigated. “The helicopter is safe and healthy and sent all the data to Earth,” stresses the US space agency NASA.
The first flight was scheduled for Monday 4.54 am (Belgian time). The Ingenuity was supposed to rise to a height of about three meters, hang there for about thirty seconds, turn and then descend and land. The images made by the helicopter had to reach Earth a day later.
That first flight is a test. If it succeeds, the Marshelicopter can then fly around five times, each time a few hundred meters further. The device will probably last about a month on Mars.
One of the tasks of the Ingenuity is to deal with the low air pressure on the surface of Mars. This can be compared to the pressure at an altitude of 30 kilometers on earth. Charging the batteries is also difficult, Mars gets about half of the solar energy on Earth during the day. At night, the parts on board are exposed to temperatures of up to 90 degrees below zero.
The Ingenuity is nearly three feet high and weighs about 2 pounds.
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