Washington D.C.: NASA said it will attempt the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at approximately 3:30 a.m. EDT (1:00 pm, Indian Standard Time), today (Monday, April 19, 2021).
The original flight date of April 11 had to be shifted as engineers worked on preflight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue. The Perseverance rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth.
Also read: NASA defers helicopter flight on Mars
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA said data from the first flight will return to Earth a few hours following the autonomous flight. A livestream will begin at 6:15 a.m. EDT (3:45 p.m. IST), as the helicopter team prepares to receive the data downlink in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
– global bihari bureau
