A Brief History
On April 19, 2021, the aptly named Ingenuity became the first man-made aircraft to fly on any planet other than Earth.
Digging Deeper
A helicopter powered by a solar battery, Ingenuity is able to fly in the thin atmosphere of Mars, only about .6% as dense as on Earth. Weighing in at about four pounds, Ingenuity has amassed over two hours of airtime in 71 flights by January 19, 2024. Ingenuity has travelled over 10 miles of surface distance at a max height of 79 feet with a max speed of 22.4 mph.
Transported to Mars with the Perseverance rover, a vehicle the size of a typical automobile, Ingenuity was built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory department of NASA at a cost of about $80 million. On January 25, 2024, the rotor of Ingenuity was damaged, and the vehicle ceased to operate.
Another first achieved by Ingenuity is the recording and transmission of the sound the little helicopter makes, the first extraterrestrial spacecraft sound ever recorded.
Note: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did.”
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Bizony, Piers. NASA Missions to Mars: A Visual History of Our Quest to Explore the Red Planet. Motorbooks, 2022.
Crumpler, Larry. Missions to Mars: A New Era of Rover and Spacecraft Discovery on the Red Planet. Harper, 2021.
The featured image in this article, JPG preview of this WEBM file showing Test flight 1 on 19 April 2021, is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that “NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted“.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.