NASA will try to carry out next Monday the historic first flight to Mars from its Ingenuity Mars helicopter, after having to postpone the first attempt due to technical problems, the US space agency announced today.
The scheduled time for this first flight would be from 3:30 a.m. on the east coast of the United States (7.30 GMT), NASA said in a statement, indicating that data from the first flight will reach Earth. a few hours later, so they will perform a live broadcast from 6:15 local time (10.15 GMT).
The historic take-off of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter from Mars Jezero Crater would be the first attempted propelled flight on another planet.
The original flight date, initially scheduled for April 11, was delayed, initially for three days later, because engineers were working on “pre-flight checks and a solution to a problem. script “.
According to a previous statement, there was a failure during a test of high-speed rotation of the rotors of the small aircraft, which departed from Florida (USA) in July 2020 stuck in the belly of the Perseverance rover, which landed last February 18 on Mars.
The Ingenuity, about 1.8 kilograms and the size of a soccer ball, carries built-in cameras and a microphone to document the flight from its perspective.
Although the flight will be autonomous, the signals that the aircraft will receive depart from JPL in California.
From there they will send general instructions on elevation and acceleration, among others, which are just parameters for Ingenuity to manage its own flight.
These signals also go first to the Perseverance rover, and this vehicle is sent to the helicopter and then repeat the operation in reverse to arrive with the response on Earth.
“The Perseverance rover will provide support during flight operations, take images, collect environmental data and house the base station that allows the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth,” NASA explained Saturday.
The Ingenuity flight would pave the way for future missions that will include advanced robotic flying vehicles, collect high-resolution images from the air, and examine places that are difficult to reach for rovers.