Ingenuity Mars helicopter also transmitted back the first image of its historic inaugural flight on Mars
Nasa successfully flew its tiny helicopter Ingenuity on Mars early Monday (April 19), the first powered flight on another planet and a feat a top engineer called "our Wright brothers' moment."
At 3:34 am Eastern Time (3:34 pm SGT), the four-pound (1.8 kilogram) rotorcraft lifted off, hovered 10 feet (three meters) above the Martian surface, then came back to rest after 39.1 seconds.
Data and images from the autonomous flight were transmitted 173 million miles (278 million kilometres) back to Earth where they were received by Nasa's array of ground antennas and processed more than three hours later.
Engineers were tensely watching their screens at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where the mission had been designed and planned for the past six years.
They broke into applause as one of them read off a checklist of tasks Ingenuity had achieved and concluded: "Ingenuity has performed its first flight—the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet."
(Related: SpaceX Will Send 4 Astronauts to the ISS This Week)
Ingenuity quickly sent back a black-and-white image from its downward-pointing navigation camera, showing its bug-like shadow cast on the surface. Then came a choppy colour video from the Perseverance rover showing Ingenuity on the ground, in flight, and then once again at rest.
More images and a smoothed-out video are expected to follow.
"We've been talking so long about our Wright brothers' moment on Mars, and here it is," said lead engineer MiMi Aung to her team, as she doled out virtual hugs. The first powered flight on Earth was achieved by the Wright brothers in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A piece of fabric from that plane has been tucked inside Ingenuity in honour of that feat.