About Ingenuity Mars Helicopter:

• It is a small, autonomous aircraft that flew to Mars aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover.
• It was sent to Mars to perform experimental flight tests to determine if powered, controlled flight at the Red Planet was possible.
• Ingenuity’s mission is experimental in nature and completely independent of the rover’s science mission.
• Ingenuity was deployed to the surface on April 4, 2021.
• On April 19, it became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. 
  • It rose to a height of 10 feet, hovered for 30 seconds, and then descended back to the ground.
  • The flight lasted 39.1 seconds. 
  • It managed to fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which isn’t conducive for flying.
• It’s piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms.
• Perseverance acts as a relay between the chopper and the earth.

Key Facts about Perseverance Rover:

• It is a robotic explorer to land on Marsas part of NASA’s ongoing Mars 2020 Mission.
• Main Job:Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth.
• The rover will collect samples of rock and soil, encase them in tubes, and leave them on the planet’s surface to be returned to Earth at a future date.
• Launch: It was launched on July 30, 2020,from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
• Landing: Successfully landed on the surface of Mars’s Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.