Update for April 19: Ingenuity successfully made its first flight on Mars. Read the full story here.
This article was updated on April 17.
The first helicopter is expected to attempt the first-ever flight on Mars on Monday (April 19) and you can follow it all online. The flight has been delayed since April 11.
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity flight coverage will begins at 6:15 a.m. EDT (1015 GMT) on Monday, with a post-flight press conference at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). You can watch that live on Space.com and on this page, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly from NASA Television, the NASA smartphone app, the agency's website and several social media platforms (such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's YouTube and Facebook channels.)
Ingenuity, which rode to Mars on the belly of the Perseverance rover, is expected to take to the air at 3:30 a.m. EDT (0730 GMT) on Monday, but the data from that flight won't arrive on Earth until several hours later. NASA's 6:15 a.m. EDT livestream will cover that data's arrival with live views from Ingenuity's control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Video: Watch NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity test its blades!
"The flight date may shift as engineers work on the deployments, preflight checks, and vehicle positioning of both Perseverance and Ingenuity," NASA said in a statement, noting that timing will be updated at the helicopter's webpage as needed.
"If the helicopter flies … as expected, the livestream will show the helicopter team analyzing the first test flight data in JPL's Space Flight Operations Facility," the agency added. Mars is several minutes light-speed away from Earth and thus, Ingenuity will take to the air autonomously and we will only know of its status after the fact.
Controllers at JPL are in the midst of a three-month intense start to the ambitious Perseverance mission, working on "Mars time" to coordinate their internal clocks with the 24 hour, 37-minute "sol" of each Martian day.
They've been in this mode since Feb. 18, when Perseverance alighted on Mars on a long-term quest to find signs of ancient habitability and to cache promising samples for a planned future sample-return mission. Ingenuity is a test part of the mission and has up to 31 days (30 sols) of planned flights to test the idea of supporting ground missions with taking images and collecting data from the air.
There will also be several livestreamed media briefings associated with the flight; members of the public can ask questions on social media using the hashtag #MarsHelicopter.
The post-flight briefing Monday at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) will include flight details from:
- Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate
- Michael Watkins, JPL director
- MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager, JPL
- Bob Balaram, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter chief engineer at JPL
- Håvard Grip, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter chief pilot at JPL
- Justin Maki, Perseverance Mars rover imaging scientist and deputy principal investigator of Mastcam-Z instrument at JPL
Exact timing on the livestreams may shift, so watch social media channels for updates.
Additionally, NASA plans two more informal talks called "Taking Flight: How Girls Can Grow Up to Be Engineers" to "focus on helping girls chart a path to engineering and provide invitations to special events for girls and women interested in the field," the agency stated.
The talks are scheduled for 4 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on April 22 and April 29. But the agency stated that exact dates and times may be adjusted after Ingenuity's first flight.
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