The historic flight of NASA’s Mars helicopter, which was scheduled for Sunday, has been delayed for a few additional days because of a technical issue.
The 4-pound solar-powered helicopter Ingenuity was booked to hover over the outside of Mars on Sunday. Nonetheless, the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted Saturday morning that during a test, there was a technical issue which has postponed the flight to April 14 at the most punctual.
“During the high-speed turn test, the grouping finished ahead of schedule during the progress from “preflight” to “flight” mode,” JPL tweeted. “The helicopter is safe and healthy. The group is diagnosing the issue.”
JPL is wanting to float the chopper around 10 feet over the outside of Mars for a time of as long as 30 seconds. It will stamp the principal example of powered flight on another planet.
“This is truly going to be considerable on the off chance that we can show that we can fly on Mars,” NASA Planetary Science Director Lori Glaze told media this week.
On the off chance that its flight does at last happen, it will be over five hours before JPL mission managers get the primary information back from the flight endeavor. The helicopter’s flight is totally self-sufficient, with the distance to Mars making it difficult to control the flight from JPL central command. Radio signals require over 15 minutes to venture out 173 million miles to Mars.
JPL orders to the helicopter are really handed-off by the Perseverance wanderer, which is stopped around 215 feet from Ingenuity and will observe any flight with its cameras. The actual helicopter is in a 33-foot-by-33-foot airfield picked for its unhindered territory.
Creativity is additionally outfitted with a camera that will document the flight.
Flying on another planet is endlessly unique in relation to flying on Earth, with mission managers taking note of that gravity on Mars is around 33% of Earth’s, while the climate on a superficial level is about 1% as thick as that on Earth.
The helicopter will convey some Wright siblings history with it. Wrapped on a link underneath the helicopter’s solar board is a little pattern of texture that covered the wings of the plane that made the principal flight on Earth — Orville and Wilbur Wright’s “Flyer” — which spearheaded air travel in 1903.