One of President John F. Kennedy’s most ambitious goals was to see the United States of America lead a crewed mission to the moon. Though he was not alive to witness it, his dream came true when the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle landed on the moon on June 20, 1969. Less than 7 hours later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon famously saying, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Since then, the world has had an insatiable hunger for exploring the far reaches of our solar system and beyond. After conquering the moon, the next step was to begin exploring other planets, like Mars. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California has been committed to designing and building the robotic spacecraft that have allowed the United States to extend its planetary exploration missions.

On July 4, 1997, NASA’s and the JPL’s unmanned Mars Pathfinder landed on a region of Mars called Ares Vallis. Soon after, the Sojourner, a remote operated wheeled drone, began roving about the surface of Mars for 95 days. Between 1997 and 2011, NASA and JPL ran 4 Mars rover programs, complete with successes and failures. On July 30, 2020, NASA and the JPL launched the Mars Perseverance, a remotely operated robotic vehicle (ROV). Weighing 2,260lbs at its launch, the Perseverance is 9ft 6 in long and 7ft 3in tall, about the size of a car. The Perseverance has 7 main payload accessories and sensors to conduct experiments on the surface of Mars, including 2 microphones and 19 cameras. One of the most highly anticipated payloads aboard the Perseverance is the inclusion of an aerial drone called Ingenuity, or Ginny for short.

On February 18, 2021, NASA live streamed the confirmed landing of the Perseverance on Mars. The ROV’s landing site was named after acclaimed science fiction writer Octavia E. Buttler. On April 3, 2021, Ingenuity was released from the underbelly of the Perseverance. A few days later, Ginny’s rotors were unlocked to prepare for her maiden flight. On April 19, 2021, a room full of JPL flight controllers dressed in bright orange polo shirts erupted into cheers and applause as they watched the Perseverance’s camera transmit footage of Ginny flying. Amid the cheers from the crew watching, with a model of Ginny in the center of the room, you can hear the drone’s earthbound chief pilot reporting on the mission. “Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight,” called out Harvard Grip, “the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet.”

Ingenuity was named by Vaneeza Ruppani, an 11th grader from Alabama after she won a NASA essay contest. Ginny is a bare bones drone that weighs about 4lbs and is 1ft 7in tall with a 4ft rotor diameter. Designing a drone to be able to achieve lift with Mars’s atmosphere was very difficult, which is why Ginny was designed like a helicopter with coaxial rotors. The rotors spin at 2,400rpm to enable VTOL (Vertical Take Off Lift). Ginny is scheduled to have up to 5 flights within 30 days of trials. Each flight will last for about 90 seconds at altitudes of 10-16ft within a 160ft range of its takeoff position. Each test will be used to see the validity of future aerial missions on Mars and other planetary surfaces. Ginny also has cameras and sensors like Perseverance on board that will collect data during each flight. Upon landing, all data will be uploaded to Perseverance to be analyzed by crews on Earth.

For Ginny’s first flight, the Perseverance recorded the mission from 330ft away for safety concerns. It took 3 hours for the video footage captured by the Perseverance to reach the ground crew led by MiMi Aung. NASA and JPL have told the public that there would be many symbolic Easter Eggs included in the Mars 2020 mission. One was the red and white pattern on the Perseverance’s parachute as it landed on Mars. The pattern revealed JPL’s coordinates in California, as well as JPL and NASA’s motto “Dare Mighty Things”. Before Ginny took flight, MiMi alluded that the drone too had a hidden surprise.

MiMi and her team recognized the similarities between Ginny being the first flight on a new world to the first ever manned flight on Earth. On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright conducted the first manned flight of a heavier-than-air vehicle with the Wright Flyer in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. To honor the Wright Brother’s ingenuity, a piece of wing fabric from the original 1903 Wright Flyer is attached to the Ingenuity. “Each world gets only one first flight,” MiMi said. She went on to say that the success of Ginny on Mars was her ultimate dream. While JFK’s dream of sending a crewed mission to the moon came true posthumously, MiMi was fortunate to watch her dreams come true with her team and the rest of the world cheering along with her.

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