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Third time’s the charm? NASA hopes to get Ingenuity in the air today

Following two attempts to lift Ingenuity off of Martian soil, NASA might stick the lift off today.

In just a few minutes NASA will give Ingenuity the all clear to lift off at which point it will climb three metres into the air, hover in place for 30 seconds and then descend back to Mars.

Unfortunately we won’t be able to watch this live but NASA will host a livestream at 12:15 local time today once it receives data from Mars. You can watch that livestream in the embed below.

Ingenuity was meant to lift off on 11th April but a watchdog timer ended a test sequence early killing off hopes of a test that day.

While fixing that issue, the lift off of Ingenuity was once again pushed back following the discovery of a software glitch. This glitch prompted NASA to perform a software update last week which was seemingly successful.

The helicopter will now head to the skies with Perseverance acting as a base station enabling communication between Ingenuity and Earth.

Until now our view of the Martian surface as only been as high as rovers stand but Ingenuity could give use a bird’s eye view of the planet while also scouting ahead to see what the rover might not be able to.

[Image – NASA/JPL-Caltech]

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