"Wright Brothers Moment": NASA's Mars Helicopter Prepares For 1st Flight

Now comes what the space agency says will be a "Wright brothers" moment on Mars: the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet.

They landed a car-size rover on Mars, and the brilliant, if cheeky, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory even snuck a coded message into the parachute used to slow it down for a soft landing that read, "Dare Mighty Things." Now comes what the space agency says will be a "Wright brothers" moment on Mars: the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet. It won't fly far, just to the height of a basketball rim and down, a short hop that should take about 40 seconds. But the autonomous flight of a tiny helicopter called Ingenuity would mark a first in interplanetary travel, demonstrate a new technology and pave the way for scientists and explorers to more quickly traverse the surface of the Red Planet. Originally expected to happen as early as Sunday, the flight was postponed until no earlier than Wednesday after a problem during a test of spinning the rotor blades at full power. In a statement Saturday, NASA said, "The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth." But it is diagnosing the problem before running another test.