The take-off of NASA’s helicopter to Mars, Ingenuity, the first aircraft equipped with an engine to fly to another planet, has been rescheduled “for no earlier than April 14”. NASA announced it. After the successful test in the past few hours, the take-off – compared to the feat of the Wright brothers, the pioneers of aviation on Earth – was scheduled for the night between Sunday and Monday (at 12:30 “local solar time on Mars”). . Now the change of plans.
“Based on data from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter arrived Friday night, NASA has decided to reschedule the first experimental flight of the helicopter no earlier than April 14,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported on its blog.
Behind the reason for the suspension is an error recorded during a high-speed spin test of the rotors of the small drone-helicopter, which departed from Florida in July 2020 attached to the belly of the Persevererance rover. The rover landed on February 18 in the Jezero crater of the “Red Planet” after a very risky seven-minute high-speed descent and after crossing the atmosphere of Mars. Ingenuity, the size of a 1.8-kilogram football, has built-in cameras and a microphone to document the flight from its perspective. But for now we have to wait.
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