Tag Archives: Mars helicopter

We flew a helicopter on Mars!

Well….I kind of wanted to get out of my rut of topics lately and NASA helped that out with the first successful flight of a helicopter on Mars early this morning….and I just saw a photo from the lander showing it about a foot off the ground and I can’t wait to see the video of the flight that should be available next week…and it takes that long since the data stream is very small from the copter to keep the weight low and give it a chance to succeed…something like this is just what I needed since the start of the pandemics…yep, I said pandemics…one caused by the virus and the other caused by guns that are used for the daily mass shootings we have seen for the past month…but, that is for another one of these. One of the coolest parts of the Mars helicopter saga is that it has on board a small piece of the fabric from the original Wright flyer onboard that the Wright Brothers flew for the first powered flight of a heavier than air craft in 1903…there are some dreamers at NASA still and that makes me smile…and it looks like the proof of concept that this copter is providing will lead to others on other missions no matter what the results of the next flights are…and I can’t wait til the copter can go higher and get a shot of the lander and it’s surroundings…we humans can still do astounding things when we try….