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Lift off! First flight on Mars launches new way to explore worlds

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully hovered for 40 seconds in Mars’s thin atmosphere.
  1. Alexandra Witze
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NASA has pulled off the first powered flight on another world. Ingenuity, the robot rotorcraft that is part of the agency’s Perseverance mission, lifted off from the surface of Mars on 19 April, in a 39.1-second flight that is a landmark in interplanetary aviation.

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Nature 592, 668-669 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00909-z

Updates & Corrections

  • Update 19 April 2021: This story was updated on 19 April to include new information about the next flights Ingenuity will take.

References

  1. Farrell, W. M., McLain, J. L., Marshall, J. R. & Wang, A. Planet. Sci. J. 2, 46 (2021).

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