Ingenuity
Sign in to savedecommissioned NASA rotorcraft on the Mars 2020 mission
AI overview
Ingenuity is a small helicopter that NASA sent to Mars as part of its 2020 mission, and it has now been decommissioned after completing its work. It mattered because it successfully demonstrated that flying aircraft could operate in Mars's thin atmosphere, proving a new way to explore the planet that future missions could build upon.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Type
- Extraterrestrial autonomous UAV helicopter
- Serial number span no
- IGY ( civil registration )
- Owner
- NASA
- Manufacturer
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Dimensions
- 121 cm × 49 cm × 52 cm (48 in × 19 in × 20 in)
- Dry mass
- 1.8 kilograms (4.0 lb)
- Communication
- Zigbee transponder with base station on Perseverance
- Power
- 6 Solar -charged Sony VTC4 Li-ion batteries ; typical motor input power: 350 watt
- Deployed
- 3 April 2021 ( 2021-04-03 ) from Perseverance
- First flight
- 19 April 2021, 07:34 UTC (to and from Wright Brothers Field )
- Last flight
- 18 January 2024 (to and from Airfield Chi (χ) in Valinor Hills )
- Flight time
Article
Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is an autonomous helicopter that operated on Mars from 2021 to 2024 as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. Ingenuity made its first flight on 19 April 2021, demonstrating that flight is possible in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and became the first aircraft to conduct a powered and controlled extraterrestrial flight. It was designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with AeroVironment, NASA's Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center with components supplied by Lockheed Martin Space, Qualcomm, and SolAero.
Ingenuity was delivered to Mars on 18 February 2021, attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, which landed at the Octavia E. Butler Landing site near the western rim of the 45 km-wide (28 mi) Jezero crater. Because radio signals take several minutes to travel between Earth and Mars, it could not be manually controlled in real time, and instead autonomously flew flight plans sent to it by JPL.