UPDATED: NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter makes first historic flight on Mars

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NASA’s miniature robot helicopter Ingenuity performed a successful takeoff and landing on Mars early on Monday, achieving the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft over the surface of another planet, the U.S. space agency said.

The Ingenuity mini-helicopter took to the Martian skies this morning, the space agency said.

It marks NASA’s first attempt at a powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Data from the flight will return from Mars to Earth in a few hours’ time.

A handout video still taken from a livestream by NASA shows NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its first test flight, as seen by NASA’s Perseverance Rover, on Mars, 19 April 2021. EPA-EFE/NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance rover provided support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enabled the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.

The original flight date of 11 April was postponed as engineers worked on pre-flight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue.

The chopper has no scientific objective – engineers just want to know if they’ve managed to take flight on Mars.

A small amount of the material that covered one of the wings of the Wright brothers’ aircraft, known as the Flyer, during the first flight in 1903 is now aboard Ingenuity.