NASA Donates Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prototype to Smithsonian
upstart writes:
NASA donates Ingenuity Mars Helicopter prototype to Smithsonian:
The Smithsonian would love to display the first vehicle to achieve powered flight on another world, but with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter still busy setting records on Mars, the Washington, D.C. institution has accepted the next best thing.
Officials from NASA and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum marked the agency's donation of the aerial prototype for Ingenuity into the museum's collection at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia on Friday (Dec. 15). The full-scale prototype was the first to demonstrate that an aircraft could fly in the atmosphere of another planet during tests performed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
The prototype's first free flight in a simulated Mars environment gave NASA the confidence to commit to sending Ingenuity to Mars. The helicopter and its companion Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.
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