NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which is attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, holds a small relic of the Wright Brothers’ first plane, which flew more than 100 years earlier.
A small amount of material from the wings of the Wright brothers’ plane, known as the Flyer, is now aboard Ingenuity, which arrived on Mars on February 18, NASA said in a statement on Tuesday. .
The small sample of fabric was wrapped with tape around a cable under the helicopter’s solar panel, the agency wrote.
The Wright brothers, NASA noted, used the same type of material (an unbleached muslin called “Pride of the West”) to cover the wings of the plane and glider from 1901 onwards.
“Although Ingenuity will attempt the first motorized controlled flight on another planet, the first strongly controlled flight to Earth took place on December 17, 1903 in the dunes of Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. North. Orville and Wilbur Wright covered 120 feet in 12 seconds during the first flight. The Wright brothers made four flights that day, each longer than the previous one, “NASA said in a statement.
“A small amount of material that covered one of the wings of the Wright brothers’ plane, known as the Flyer, during the first flight, is now aboard Ingenuity,” the statement added.
The fabric sample, which is the size of a postage stamp, made the 300 million-mile expedition to Mars with the blessing of the Wright brothers’ great-granddaughter and great-grandson, The Associated Press reported, citing a commissioner of the Carillon Historical Park, which donated the piece to NASA.
“Wilbur and Orville Wright would be delighted to know that a small piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age in just a quarter of a mile, will be back on fire in history!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement the park provided the AP.
Another piece of material, in addition to a small wooden chip from the Wright Flyer, was also aboard the July 11, 1969 Apollo mission to the moon, NASA noted.
The ingenuity is on its way to testing the first controlled and motorized flight of an aircraft on another planet before April 8, NASA wrote. Before the Ingenuity can test the first flight, the helicopter and its crew must meet a number of “daunting milestones,” NASA’s statement said.
For now, the helicopter is still attached to Perseverance’s belly, NASA wrote.
On July 30, Perseverance was launched into space to Mars from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the mission to look for signs of past life on the red planet. On February 18, the rover successfully landed on Mars, becoming the fifth rover NASA has sent to the red planet.