Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.
This week, for the first time ever, there has been a helicopter flight on another planet. Early Monday morning, NASA launched the Ingenuity space helicopter on Mars. It hovered around 10 feet off the ground for 30 seconds. The drone was carried by the Perseverance rover.
While anything that happens on the Martian planet is noteworthy, this helicopter flight is especially interesting as not only is it the first time anything like this has happened, but the atmosphere on Mars had people wondering if it was even possible. That’s because Mar’s atmosphere is 1% the density of Earth’s.
READ MORE: Will Elon Musk go to Mars?
To put that in perspective, this feat would be like flying a drone three times as high as the peak of Mount Everest, according to Business Insider.
This will not be the only flight for Ingenuity and NASA. With this first flight being a success, four more flights are planned over the next month. These next flights will also be for longer periods of time and should be higher as well.
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, tells BI, “We are aware that failure is more likely in this kind of scenario, and we’re comfortable with it because of the upside potential that success has.”
READ MORE: NASA is literally going to fling satellites into space
Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
Editors’ Recommendations:
- Your next bike might have airless tires based on NASA rover tech
- Nokia has been awarded a NASA contract to bring 4G….to the freaking moon
- A billionaire paid SpaceX for a multi-day trip around the Earth and he’s taking 3 people for the ride
- The FCC is throwing $886 million at SpaceX in hopes it brings high-speed internet to rural areas
Follow us on Flipboard, Google News, or Apple News
