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.
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We share our planet with maybe 10 million species of plants, animals, birds, fish, fungi and bugs. And to help identify them, millions of people are using a free phone app. "Currently we have about six million people using the platform every month," said Scott Loarie, the executive director of iNaturalist, a nonprofit.
Washington — As voters gear up for the midterm elections in November that will decide control of the House and Senate, the Supreme Court is set to weigh Monday whether states can count mail ballots that are postmarked by, but arrive after, Election Day.
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