NASA's new feat

Test flight on Mars will have wider benefits

The successful test flight of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars ushers in a new era for space exploration. Planets like Mars can be explored much quicker by air than by ground vehicles like rovers. This could also result in significant advances in high-altitude helicopter connectivity on Earth itself. The Ingenuity is a 2-kg drone. It flew for 40 seconds at a height of 3 metres above the Martian surface. Those statistics hardly convey the range of engineering problems NASA solved to get Ingenuity airborne. In order to fly, lift is generated to counter gravity. Lift depends on aircraft design, on