The NASA helicopter Ingenuity on Mars made the first powered controlled flights by an aircraft on a planet other than Earth. It first flew on April 19, 2021, after landing on February 18 attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity weighs 1.8 kilograms (4.0 lb) and is 49 cm (19 in) tall. It is powered by six lithium-ion solar-charged batteries. It was built and operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a field center of NASA. Ingenuity was designed to fly five times in 30 Mars sols (31 Earth days), but operated far above expectations, making its 72nd and final flight on January 18, 2024 (UTC), 977 Mars sols (1,004 Earth days) after its first flight. Its rotor blades were damaged on the last flight's landing, causing NASA to retire the craft. Mission engineers determined that Ingenuity’s navigation system could not provide accurate data during the flight over featureless terrain, resulting in an off-balance hard landing.
List of flights
Flight totals at end of mission
Flight records
Flight path
See also ARES – 2008 robotic Mars aircraft proposal Atmosphere of Mars Dragonfly – Robotic rotorcraft mission to Saturn's moon Titan, planned launch in 2028 Exploration of Mars List of artificial objects on Mars List of firsts in aviation
References
Citations
Status reports
External links Mars Helicopter Technology Demonstrator. (PDF) – The key design features of the prototype drone. First Video of NASA's Ingenuity helicopter in flight – via YouTube. Perseverance route map Archived April 21, 2022, at the Wayback Machine — including the flight tracks of Ingenuity Explore Mars






