The U.S. space agency announced this Saturday that NASA will attempt to make the historic first flight of a helicopter to Mars next Monday after postponing the first attempt due to technical issues.
NASA said in a statement that the scheduled time for the first flight would be on the east coast of the United States (7:30 GMT) from 3:30 a.m., indicating that data from the first aircraft would reach Earth. After a few hours, they will do a live broadcast starting at 6:15 (10.15 GMT) local time.
The historic lifting of the brilliant Mars helicopter from the Jessero abyss on Mars marks the first attempt of a plane to fly to another planet.
The original flight date, originally scheduled for April 11, was initially postponed three days later as engineers worked on a “pre-flight test and solution to the scripting problem”.
According to an earlier report, the small plane’s rotor failed during a high-speed test, which took off from Florida (USA) in July 2020 and landed in the belly of the diligent rover, which landed on Mars last February 18.
About 1.8 kilograms and the size of a soccer ball, it has ingenious built-in cameras and a microphone to document the aircraft from your perspective.
Although the aircraft is autonomous, the signals received by the aircraft are based on the JPL in California.
From there they will send general commands regarding altitude and acceleration, which, among other things, are the parameters for the ingenuity to manage its own aircraft.
Those signals first go to the diligence rover, and then the vehicle sends them to the helicopter, which then repeats the reverse function in response to the earth.
NASA explained this Saturday that “the rover of diligence will provide support during flight operations, take pictures, collect environmental data and allow the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.”
Ingenious aircraft advanced robotic flying vehicles for future missions, collecting high-resolution images from the air and exploring sites where rovers are difficult to reach.