NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has successfully completed its second flight test on the surface of Mars, flying higher and farther than it did during its first test earlier this week. Ingenuity’s second flight, which occurred on Thursday, saw it fly five metres above the Martian surface over Jezero Crater, an area now dubbed Wright Brothers Field.
It’s one for the history books! In an exceptional feat of engineering, NASA has flown the first rotorcraft on the surface of another planet, with its solar-powered and remotely operated helicopter Ingenuity taking to the Martian skies for 39 seconds. In this episode of the World of Aviation Podcast, host Adam Thorn and reporter Hannah
Earlier this week, the Ingenuity helicopter — which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February — took off from the Martian surface. More importantly, it hovered for about 30 seconds, three metres above the surface, and came right back down again. It may not sound like a huge feat, but it is. Ingenuity’s
NASA successfully completed the first aircraft flight on a foreign planet on Monday, when its remotely operated helicopter, Ingenuity, took to Martian skies for nearly 40 seconds. Ingenuity is a solar-powered rotorcraft vehicle that boasts twin propellers, a metallic body, four legs, and weighs just under two kilograms. It was sent aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars
Virgin Galactic has been forced to cut short a test flight of its SpaceShipTwo spaceplane over the weekend after its rocket motor’s ignition sequence failed to complete. Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company was conducting the third crewed test of its VSS Unity spaceplane into suborbital space on Saturday when the test was abandoned partway
Virgin Galactic has set a date for its rescheduled flight tests into suborbital space to begin from 11 December, after postponing its previously planned tests due to COVID-19 restrictions. From 11 December, Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism company will conduct the third crewed test flight of its VSS Unity space plane from New Mexico’s Spaceport.
