The future is here.
NASA is regularly flying a robotic helicopter around Mars while a car-sized rover below zaps rocks with a laser as it searches for potential signs of past life. The space agency recently celebrated the Ingenuity helicopter's whopping 50th flight over the Martian desert, as it flew well over 1,000 feet and reached an altitude of nearly 60 feet.
"Just as the Wright brothers continued their experiments well after that momentous day at Kitty Hawk in 1903, the Ingenuity team continues to pursue and learn from the flight operations of the first aircraft on another world," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement(opens in a new tab).
While announcing the landmark flight, NASA also included recent footage of Ingenuity's 47th flight, which you can watch below. NASA's Perseverance rover filmed this clip from almost 400 feet away.
"This video shows the dust initially kicked up by the helicopter's spinning rotors, as well as Ingenuity taking off, hovering, and beginning its 1,444-foot (440-meter) journey to the southwest," the space agency explained. "The rotorcraft landed — off camera — at Airfield 'Iota.'"
Folks, this might not be an epic Schwarzenegger action scene, but it is wild. Before 2021, humanity had never flown a powered aircraft on another planet. Now the Ingenuity helicopter, an experimental robot, has vastly exceeded engineers' expectations. NASA hoped to prove it could fly something on Mars. But the helicopter has flown 50 flights, with many more planned. And we can watch it zooming over another planet's rocky, red desert.
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The successful helicopter, with rotors reaching four feet long from tip to tip, has also proven that NASA can build aerial "scouts" for future extraterrestrial endeavors. "Every time Ingenuity goes airborne, it covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve," NASA said.
"We are not in Martian Kansas anymore."
The chopper's extraterrestrial journey, however, is growing more perilous. The robot is venturing through Mars' Jezero Crater, a place that once hosted a rich river delta — an environment that could have hosted Martian life, if any ever existed, that is. But the terrain is no longer flat. NASA engineers are guiding Ingenuity through an area with "dunes, boulders, and rocks, and surrounded by hills that could have us for lunch," explained Josh Anderson, NASA's Ingenuity operations lead.
"We are not in Martian Kansas anymore," he said.
