The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has released more details about the first ever flight by a human-built aircraft on another planet. The aircraft, an autonomous drone helicopter designated Ingenuity, made its maiden flight, on Mars, on Monday. That flight lasted a total of 39.1 seconds and the machine reached a pre-programmed maximum altitude of 3 m. It maintained stable hover for 30 seconds. Ingenuity is a 49 cm high, 1.8 kg mass, technology demonstrator, intended to establish whether or not aircraft can operate in the very thin Martian atmosphere (the surface pressure of which is only 1% of the surface pressure of Earth’s atmosphere). As such, it carries no scientific sensors.
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