The connection between the first plane to fly on Earth and the first tiny helicopter that is scheduled to fly to Mars in the coming weeks: The Ingenuity helicopter, scheduled to make its debut flight to the neighboring planet in a few weeks, was attached to a piece of cloth from the Wright brothers’ plane, which first flew in December 1903 in North Carolina. This was announced by the US Space Agency.
The tiny helicopter, which arrived on Mars along with the spacecraft “Perseverance”, is supposed to try to hover on the planet no earlier than April 8th.
The piece of cloth, from the bottom of the left wing, was transferred to NASA by the Historical Museum in Dayton, Ohio, the city where the Wright brothers grew up.
Documentation of the spacecraft landing on Mars persisted
(Photo: NASA)
“Wilbur and Orville Wright will be happy to know that a small portion of the Flyer I plane that took off in 1903 and reached a quarter of a mile is going to make history on Mars,” said Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright. On December 17, 1903, the plane made four flights, 279 meters long between them.
It turns out that this is not the first time that parts of the Wright Brothers’ historic plane have gone beyond Earth’s borders. Astronaut Neil Armstrong also took a piece of cloth from the plane to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. 29 years later after John Glenn, who holds the title of the oldest astronaut in history, part of the plane on the 1998 Discovery space shuttle flight.
The helicopter is nothing but a small glider, and “In the Sky of the Planet” is a fairly extensive definition for an aircraft that should rise to a height of only five meters, fly a maximum horizontal distance of 300 meters and stay in the air for up to a minute and a half on each flight.