Kicker - NASA’s ingenuity

NICK EICHER, HOST: The Mars mission for NASA is working toward another first-flight milestone: that of its little helicopter called “Ingenuity.” NASA spokeswoman Lori Gaze talking about the work of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory the JPL.

AUDIO: A small team of NASA helicopter experts assisted JPL in verifying that Ingenuity could fly in Mars’ super thin atmosphere.

Right now they’re looking at April 8th for the big moment. And this first flight will pay tribute to the original first flight the Wright Brothers flight 117 years ago over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

NASA’s Martian helicopter holds a small swatch of fabric from the 1903 “Wright Flyer.”

Engineers taped the material to a cable beneath the helicopter’s solar panel.

And this isn’t the first time one of these historical fragments has traveled to space. A different piece of the Wright Brothers plane also flew to the moon with Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong more than 50 years ago.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

This illustration made available by NASA depicts the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars after launching from the Perseverance rover, background left.  (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)

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