NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Flies on Mars
World Aviation History is Made Source: NASA - Ingenuity 1st Image First Helicopter That Flew on Another Planet NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has succeeded in achieving the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground beneath Ingenuity during flight, to take its first black and white image from the air. The small rotocraft has made world history with its first flight. It is part of a long series of NASA achievements that were thought to be technologically impossible. First Flight Ingenuity is solar-powered. During its first flight, it reached a height of ten feet and hovered steadily for thirty seconds before landing smoothly back on Mars after 39.1 seconds of flight. The flight test was totally autonomous. Because of Mars' nearly 200 million mile distance from Earth, NASA can not control Ingenuity with a joystick. Ingenuity's flight was powered and piloted