Learn bits
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

More Related Current Affairs View All

05 May

Key objectives of caste count

'The Union Cabinet has decided that the next Census will include questions on caste to its enumeration of India’s population, for the first time in almost a century. ' T

Read More

05 May

2 new genome-edited rice varieties

'Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan recently released two genome-edited varieties of rice, the first achievement of its kind in the country.' These two varieties, which

Read More

05 Mar

First-ever comprehensive survey of India’s river dolphins

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the results of the first-ever comprehensive population estimation of riverine dolphins – Gangetic and Indus dolphins – done in In

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps