The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration to test powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time. It hitched a ride to Mars on the Perseverance rover. Once the rover reached a suitable "airfield" location, it released Ingenuity to the surface so it could perform a series of test flights over a 30-Martian-day experimental window. The helicopter completed its technology demonstration after three successful flights. For the first flight on April 19, 2021, Ingenuity took off, climbed to about 10 feet (3 meters) above the ground, hovered in the air briefly, completed a turn, and then landed. It was a major milestone: the very first powered, controlled flight in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and, in fact, the first such flight in any world beyond Earth. After that, the helicopter successfully performed additional experimental flights of incrementally farther distance and greater altitude. With its tech demo complete, Ingenuity transitions to a new operations demonstration phase to explore how future rovers and aerial explorers can work together. Ingenuity is a small robotic helicopter operating on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. On April 19, 2021, it successfully completed the first powered controlled flight by an aircraft on a planet besides Earth, taking off vertically, hovering and landing. With eight successful flights as of June 23, 2021, the solar-charged battery-powered coaxial drone rotorcraft is serving as a technology and operations demonstration for the potential use of flying probes on future missions to Mars and other worlds, and will have the potential to scout locations of interest and support planned driving routes for the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Dave Lavery is the program executive, MiMi Aung is the project manager, Håvard Fjær Grip is the Chief Pilot, and Bob Balaram is Chief Engineer. Other contributors include AeroVironment, Inc., the NASA Ames Research Center, and the NASA Langley Research Center. Ingenuity was intended to fly up to five times during its 30-day test campaign scheduled early in the rover's mission. Primarily technology demonstrations, the flights were planned for altitudes ranging 3–5 m (10–16 ft) above the ground for up to 90 seconds each. Ingenuity, which can travel up to 50 m (160 ft) downrange and then back to the starting area, uses autonomous control during its short flights, which are telerobotically planned and scripted by operators at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It communicates directly with the Perseverance rover after each landing. Ingenuity travelled to Mars attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, arriving at the Octavia E. Butler Landing site in Jezero crater on February 18, 2021. It deployed on April 3, 2021, and after unloading the drone Perseverance drove approximately 100 m (330 ft) away to allow it a safe "buffer zone" in which it made its first flight. On 19 April 2021 at 07:15 UTC, Ingenuity made its first takeoff, which was confirmed 3 hours later at 10:15 UTC, as seen in a livestreaming TV feed from JPL mission control. Ingenuity rose 3 m (9.8 ft) and hovered there for about 30 seconds before returning to the surface of Mars (with a total flight time of 39.1 seconds). Ingenuity carries a piece of fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer, the Wright Brothers' airplane used in the first controlled powered heavier-than-air flight on Earth. The initial take-off and landing area for Ingenuity is named Wright Brothers Field as a tribute. Before Ingenuity, the first flight of any kind on a planet beyond Earth was an unpowered balloon flight on Venus, by the Soviet Vega 1 spacecraft in 1985. The expected lateral range was exceeded in the third flight, and the flight duration was exceeded in the fourth flight on April 30. With those technical successes, Ingenuity achieved its original objectives. NASA then planned more flights as operations demonstrations, hoping to show how future missions can work collaboratively. During its April 30, 2021 flight, Ingenuity also became the first interplanetary spacecraft whose sound was recorded by another interplanetary spacecraft, the Perseverance rover. On its May 7, 2021 flight, Ingenuity became the first interplanetary spacecraft which landed at a different place than the launch site. On June 15, 2021, the team behind Ingenuity was named the 2021 winner of the John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award for Space Exploration from the Space Foundation. NASA's JPL and AeroVironment published the conceptual design in 2014 for a scout helicopter to accompany a rover. By mid 2016, US$15 million was being requested to keep development of the helicopter on track. By December 2017, engineering models of the vehicle had been tested in a simulated Martian atmosphere and models were undergoing testing in the Arctic, but its inclusion in the mission had not yet been approved nor funded. The United States federal budget, announced in March 2018, provided US$23 million for the helicopter for one year and it was announced on May 11, 2018 that the helicopter could be developed and tested in time to be included in the Mars 2020 mission. The helicopter underwent extensive flight-dynamics and environment testing, and was then mounted on the underside of the Perseverance rover in August 2019. Its mass is just under 1.8 kg (4.0 lb) and JPL has specified that it is planned to have a design life of five flights on Mars. NASA has invested about US$80 million to build Ingenuity and about US$5 million to operate the helicopter. In April 2020, the vehicle was named Ingenuity by Vaneeza Rupani, a girl in the 11th grade at Tuscaloosa County High School in Northport, Alabama, who submitted an essay into NASA's "Name the Rover" contest. Known in planning stages as the Mars Helicopter Scout,[34] or simply the Mars Helicopter, the nickname Ginny later entered use in parallel to the parent rover Perseverance being affectionately referred to as Percy NASA and JPL officials described the first Ingenuity flight as their "Wright Brothers moment", by analogy to the first successful airplane flight on Earth. A small piece of the wing cloth from the Wright brothers' 1903 Wright Flyer is attached to a cable underneath Ingenuity's solar panel. In 1969, Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong carried a similar Wright Flyer artifact to the Moon in the Lunar Module Eagle. NASA named Ingenuity's first take-off and landing airstrip Wright Brothers Field, which the UN agency ICAO gave an airport code of JZRO for Jezero Crater, and the drone itself a type designator of IGY, call-sign INGENUITY.

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