NASA to attempt first controlled flight of Ingenuity Mars helicopter today

The most awaited moment by NASA has come, after so many trials and unsuccessful attempts to fly the Mars helicopter, today NASA will make another attempt to fly the Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA is optimistic that today the helicopter will take off from the Martian land at 12:31 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) which will be 1:01 pm according to IST (Indian Standard Time) in India.

 NASA in a press release said that data from the first flight will return to Earth a few hours following the autonomous flight."A live stream will begin at 6:15 am EDT, as the helicopter team prepares to receive the data downlink in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA`s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)."

According to Indian Standard Time (IST), the flight will be attempted at 3:45 pm which you can watch on NASA Television, the agency app, website, and social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.

 On Mon., April 19, our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter makes its first attempt at flight. Watch live coverage from @NASAJPL beginning at 6:15am ET (10:15am UTC) as the team receives the first data & finds out if they've made history: https://t.co/JFEsGuAYbr pic.twitter.com/w6RjKWVHV7 — NASA (@NASA) April 19, 2021

The original flight date of April 11 rescheduled as engineers worked on preflight checks and a solution to a command sequence issue. The 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.

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