Ingenuity didn’t fly this week

Last week NASA announced that the drone Ingenuity, who landed together with the Perseverance Rover, would attempt its first flight on Sunday, April 11th. A few days before the flight, they did a test spin up of their rotor blades.

Something was not right, and so the planned flight was scrapped.

The good news? The ingenuity team announced Monday that they’ve found a software fix for the trouble, and will be rescheduling the flight after they can run all the relevant tests on the software and the hardware.

Scientists are understandably extremely caution, as there is NO chance of fixing that helicopter located on a planet over three light minutes away!

Its lightweight design and unique shape reflect the difficulty with aerodynamic flight in Mars’ atmosphere, which is only 0.6% the air pressure on Earth at sea level. We’re looking forward to some aerial shots of the red planet!

For a nice animation of the helicopter and further details, do check out ingenuity’s website.