If everything goes to plan, the first drone flight on Mars will happen as soon as the 8th of April. The small drone aboard the Perseverance rover that landed on Mars on February 18th, called Ingenuity, bears a tiny piece of fabric from one wing of Flyer 1 – the plane that made the first powered flights in December 1903.
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Commenting on the impending flight of Ingenuity, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Bob Balaram said: “The Wright brothers ushered in aerial mobility as a dimension for us to be able to travel here on Earth. In the same way, we are hoping that Ingenuity also allows us to expand and open up aerial mobility on Mars.” He added that the small piece of Flyer 1’s wing is about the size of a postage stamp and is attached to a small cable beneath Ingenuity’s solar panel.
The Ingenuity team aims to make a handful of short flights in the first month of operation, which starts with Perseverance releasing the small chopper from its underside onto the red surface of Mars. According to the team, the deployment itself is quite a challenge and is a long and involved process, which will take up to six days to complete.
It is hoped that Ingenuity will prove to be the testbed that makes aerial exploration of Mars common in years to come. The drones could complete automated flights to survey the area for rovers, make their own measurements and gather their own data from exploration. Of course, it can also go places where rovers can’t necessarily follow.
“The future of powered flight in space exploration is solid and strong,” Bobby Braun, director for planetary science at JPL, said during a news conference.
A different piece of the fabric material, along with a small splinter of wood, from the Flyer 1 was flown to the moon and back aboard Apollo 11.
