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Science & Tech.
Pradeep Kumar

20/04/21 13:25 PM IST

Mars helicopter

In news

NASA successfully flew its tiny helicopter Ingenuity on Mars

Highlights
  • The first powered flight on another planet and a feat a top engineer called “our Wright brothers’ moment.
  • Data and images from the autonomous flight were transmitted 278 million km back to Earth where they were received by NASA’s array of ground antennas and processed more than three hours later.
  • The first powered flight on Earth was achieved by the Wright brothers in 1903 in North Carolina.
Issues
  • NASA had originally planned the flight for April 11 but postponed it over a software issue that was identified during a planned high-speed test of the aircraft’s rotors. 
  • The issue was resolved with a software update and tweak in coding.
Tech demonstration
  • Ingenuity travelled to Mars attached to the underside of Perseverance, which touched down on the planet on February 18 on a mission to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.
  • Ingenuity’s goal, by contrast, is to demonstrate its technology works, and it won’t contribute to Perseverance’s science goals.
Source: The Hindu

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