In about 19 minutes, the first rotary-powered flight will take place on another planet. The cute but ground(or sky?)-breaking little copter called Ingenuity hitched a ride on NASA's Perseverance rover which landed in a spectacular fashion earlier this year.
Ingenuity will open up new horizons for exploration on the red planet. Why is it a big deal? Well, it is incredibly difficult to fly on Mars as compared to Earth. Mars has a very thin atmosphere at only about 1% of Earth's. For its first flight today, it will only hover a few feet from the ground for around 30 seconds before landing back down. Small steps but incredibly crucial. We're excited to be seeing this lil baby fly in a few minutes, and we look forward to it buzzing around (and annoying) Perseverance in the future.
Here's the NASA link for the live broadcast of this moment in history:
