Ingenuity helicopter poised for maiden flight on Mars
CBSN
After troubleshooting a software glitch, NASA's $80 million Ingenuity helicopter will attempt its first controlled, powered flight in the ultra-thin atmosphere of Mars early Monday that could be a "Wright brothers moment" paving the way to future interplanetary aircraft.
Tipping the scales at just 4 pounds — 1.5 pounds in the lower gravity of Mars — Ingenuity's counter-rotating 4-foot-long rotors, spinning at 2,400 revolutions per minute, will be commanded to change their pitch, "biting" deeper into the thin atmosphere for a liftoff from the floor of Jezero Crater at 3:31 a.m. ET. With the Perseverance rover looking on from a safe distance, Ingenuity is programmed to climb 10 feet straight up, hover, turn in place and then land for a test flight spanning 40 seconds or so.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.