NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which is attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, contains a small relic of the Wright brothers’ first plane, which flew more than 100 years earlier.
A small amount of material from the wings of the Wright brothers’ aircraft, known as the Flyer, is now on board the Ingenuity, which arrived on Mars on February 18, NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.
The small tissue sample was wrapped with tape on a cable located under the helicopter’s solar panel, the agency wrote.
The Wright brothers, NASA noted, used the same type of material – a raw muslin called “Pride of the West” – to cover the glider and wings of the aircraft from 1901.
“While Ingenuity would attempt the first motorized and controlled flight on another planet, the first motorized and controlled flight on Earth occurred on December 17, 1903, in the windswept dunes of Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina . Orville and Wilbur Wright covered 120 feet in 12 seconds during the first flight. The Wright brothers made four flights that day, each longer than the last, ”says the NASA statement.
“A small amount of the material that covered one of the wings of the Wright brothers’ aircraft, known as Flyer, during the first flight is now on board the Ingenuity,” added the statement.
The tissue sample, which is the size of a postage stamp, made the 300 million-mile expedition to Mars with the blessing of the Wright brothers’ niece and great-grandson, the Associated Press reported, citing a curator from Carillon Historical Park, who donated the piece to NASA.
“Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to know that a small piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by just a quarter mile, will fly into history again on Mars!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement that the park provided the AP.
A different piece of the material, in addition to a small chip of wood from the Wright Flyer, was also on board the July 11, 1969 Apollo mission to the moon, NASA noted.
Ingenuity is on track to attempt the first controlled and motorized flight of an aircraft on another planet, not before April 8, NASA wrote. Before Ingenuity can attempt the first flight, the helicopter and its team must meet a series of “scary milestones”, says the NASA statement.
For now, the helicopter remains attached to Perseverance’s belly, NASA wrote.
On July 30, Perseverance was launched into space towards Mars from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to look for signs of past life on the red planet. On February 18, the rover successfully landed on Mars, becoming the fifth rover that NASA sent to the red planet.