NASA unveils Mars helicopter flight plans to assist Perseverance rover
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. - "We are here today to celebrate great engineering achievements that required hard work, perseverance and above all, ingenuity," said Lori Glaze, the director of NASA’s planetary science division.
NASA is unveiling plans for the Mars rover assistant named Ingenuity, a helicopter located in the stomach of NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rover and its helicopter successfully landed inside Mars' Jezero crater in February, and now, Ingenuity is ready to fly.
"It will have 31 Earth days to attempt to be the first helicopter to fly on another planet," Glaze said.
Perseverance is on its way to Ingenuity’s flight zone, where the rover will safely lower the helicopter to the martian surface. NASA teams will try to pull off up to five test flights, lasting 90 seconds each.
"We wanted to find something that we called an airfield, which is an area where it is safe for the helicopter to take off and also a place where it is safe to land again after a flight. We will hover in place for about 30 seconds and make a turn with the helicopter while we are hovering and then come down and then land again," said Havard Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot.
"We are looking forward to seeing how our little helicopter does on the surface of Mars and we know people around the world are eager to join us for that exciting 31-day demonstration," Glaze said.