Sadly I couldn’t watch it live but it seems the first little hop worked!
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I liked a comment on my local news site’s story on this extraordinary first:
“Congrats. First powered flight on another planet… And it was delayed. I wonder if baggage was lost also?”
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Any landing you can pull telemetry from is a good landing?
I watched it and the nerd factor of that team is about 500%. Looks like a nice career to me!
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Full video arrived
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HOLY MARS! This is such an achievement…
Impressed.
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The take off looked pretty normal. No dust at all, which is I guess due to how thin the atmosphere is. The landing looked sort of fast, but then the gravity is different (a third of ours here), so could just be how it is. Cool!
So…based on history, in 8 years we should have the first landing on an aircraft carrier on Mars?
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Woohoo, amazing! That is a great proof of concept and I imagine using drones could speed up exploration massively. They won’t replace rovers but it’s a whole new arrow in the quiver for mission planners.
I am imagining high definition geomapping drones deployed en masse to decide the best spot where to plonk a rover next and so on…very cool.
Isn’t technically Perseverance rover an aircraft carrier anyway?
It did drive around and deploy Ingenuity as a separate vehicle by dropping it underneath it and then driving off? I guess it would have been neater if the drone could land back on the rover and then using the RTG to recharge rather than it’s solar 
Or someone at NASA left their rendering settings down at ‘medium’ 
… and so it begins …
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I admit that it looks cooler than the old one.
But I also kinda like this one (although red white and blue are overused colors on flags)
And… that’s it!
That little helicopter flew 72 times.
Sadly the rotor now has been damaged and doesn’t allow a 73rd flight it seems.
What an accomplishment, congrats to everyone involved!
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It was one heckuva bold project. Whirlybirds RULE!
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Well said Aginor! A stunning technical achievement given the conditions under which the little helicopter operated.
This is a fantastic podcast concerning the project.
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Imagine that: damn cold, thin air, and you do over 70 flights without any maintenance!
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I can’t believe how the battery survived, how it was too weak at night to power anything due to the extremely cold temperatures, but then it would wake every morning with the light of day. And how they made the rotors so light and thin, but produce enough lift in the minimal atmosphere. Never mind explore, recce, and gather photos. Just an amazing technological achievement.
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