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The historic journey to fly the first helicopter on Mars
When the Ingenuity helicopter takes flight on Mars this month, the technology demonstration could pave the way for future powered, controlled flight on Mars and other planets in our solar system -- not unlike the trail blazed by NASA's Sojourner Mars rover in 1997.
www.cnn.com
(CNN)When the Ingenuity helicopter takes flight this month, it will be a Wright brothers moment on Mars. This first powered, controlled flight on another planet has been years in the making -- and it has roots in the first such flight on Earth.
It has been 117 years since Orville Wright took flight in Flyer 1 for 12 seconds on a historic December day in 1903 at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In the image captured by John Daniels, a member of the US Life-Saving Station at the site, Orville's brother Wilbur can be seen running alongside the aircraft. During the fourth and final flight that day, Wright achieved a nearly 60-second flight.
Millions of miles away and more than a century later, the 4-pound Ingenuity helicopter will use its two pairs of 4-foot (1.2-meter) blades to reach nearly 10 feet (3 meters) up through the thin Martian atmosphere. The miniscule helicopter will hover for 30 seconds, capture images, make a turn and return to the ground.
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"The first flight is special. It's by far the most important flight that we plan to do," said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity's chief pilot at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
I've been to Kitty Hawk & Kill Devil Hills & the Wright Bros. park. The Wrights chose this area because of the heavy on-shore winds & high dunes.