NASA is planning to fly their Ingenuity Helicopter on the surface of Mars at approximately 3:30am EDT, but it will take a few hours for the teams at JPL to receive the data from the flight. A livestream will begin at 6:15am EDT as they prepare to see how the helicopter did during this autonomous flight in the Martian Atmosphere.
This is the first time ever that a vehicle will propellers will fly on another celestial body other that Earth. The original date for this flight was April 11th, but was delayed as an issue appeared during the preflight checks. Ingenuity flew to Mars on the belly the the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars on February 18th. After doing a series of checks on the rover to ensure it had arrived safely, it began deploying the helicopter bit-by-bit. After dropping it onto the surface, Perseverance backed away and will monitor the flight using its onboard cameras. Ingenuity also has some cameras and will be recording the entirety of the flight as well.
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