Washington,United States — NASA successfully flew its tiny helicopter Ingenuity on Mars early Monday, the first powered flight on another planet and a feat a top engineer called “our Wright brothers’ moment.”
At 3:34 a.m. Eastern Time (0734 GMT), the four-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft lifted off, hovered 10 feet (three meters) above the Martian surface, then came back to rest after 39.1 seconds.
Data and images from the autonomous flight were transmitted 173 million miles (278 million kilometers) back to Earth where they were received by NASA’s array of ground antennas and processed more than three hours later.
Engineers were tensely watching their screens at the Jet Pro…
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