American space agency Nasa has successfully flown a small helicopter on Mars.
Photo: AFP
The drone, called Ingenuity, was airborne for less than a minute, but Nasa is celebrating what represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another planet.
Confirmation came via a satellite at Mars which relayed the chopper's data back to Earth.
The space agency is promising more adventurous flights in the day's ahead.
Ingenuity will be commanded to fly higher and further as engineers seek to test the limits of the technology.
"We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet," said MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
"We've been talking for so long about our Wright Brothers moment on Mars, and here it is."
Getting airborne on the Red Planet is not easy.
The atmosphere is very thin, just 1 percent of the density here at Earth.
This gives the blades on a rotor craft very little to bite into to gain lift.
Ingenuity was therefore made extremely light and given the power to turn those blades extremely fast - at over 2500 revolutions per minute.
The hope is this initial demonstration could eventually transform how we explore some distant worlds.
Drones might be used to scout ahead for future rovers, and even astronauts once they eventually get to Mars.
Nasa has already approved a helicopter mission to Titan, the big moon of Saturn. Dragonfly, as the mission is known, should arrive at Titan in the mid-2030s.
"Ingenuity has performed its first flight — the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet!"
— NASA (@NASA) April 19, 2021
The data reveals: Our #MarsHelicopter has had a successful first flight: pic.twitter.com/h5a6aGGgHG
- BBC
