Ingenuity manages to fly on Mars.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, FLORIDA – A small helicopter above NASA’s Perseverance rover robot can finally see the Red Planet for the first time.
A helicopter weighing 1.8 kg named Ingenuity it travels to Mars by sticking to the belly of Perseverance. Over the weekend, Perseverance drops the shield of debris protecting Ingenuity during the rover’s epic February 18 landing on the surface of Jezero Crater.
This move helps pave the way for Ingenuity’s test flights, which can take place as early as the first week of April.
“Gone are the debris shields, and here’s our first look at the helicopter. The helicopter is stowed to the side, folded and locked in place, so there’s some reverse origami to do before I can put it down. But first, I’m off to the ‘ The helipad ‘designated, a few days’ drive from here, “wrote the NASA official, via accounts Twitter Perseverance official, reported at Space, Tuesday (23/3).
No helicopter has ever flown in the world beyond Earth. NASA hopes Ingenuity changes that, and in a big way. A successful surprise attack by a bantam helicopter could open up Mars for future extensive aerial exploration.
After several Ingenuity flights are completed, Perseverance will begin to focus earnestly on its main task of hunting for signs of ancient Martian life and collecting samples to return to Earth in the future.
The mission will be concentrated in the Jazero crater which has a width of 45 kilometers. Observations by the Mars orbiter indicate that the crater contained large, deep lakes and river deltas billions of years ago.
Ingenuity is one of the two technology demonstrations above Perseverance. The other, the so-called MOXIE (“Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment”), is designed to produce oxygen from the thin, carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere of Mars.
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