NASA's Project Manager's Video Gains Attention After Flying Helicopter On Mars

Helicopter on Mars: A video of a project manager of NASA, Mimi Aung has been gaining public attention after the American space agency successfully flew a small helicopter on Mars.

The drone called Ingenuity flew in the atmosphere of Mars for about 40 seconds and NASA is celebrating the first flight by an aircraft on another planet.

The video was shared on Twitter by Sophia Gad-Nasr, who is an Astroparticle Physicist in which a delighted Aung can be heard saying that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet. The Physicist congratulated Aung saying that History has been made today.

"Mimi Aung is EVERYONE TODAY!! She tears up in-case-of-failure plan because IT'S A SUCCESS: "We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet" History has been made, everyone!", the tweet read.

Mimi Aung is EVERYONE TODAY!! She tears up in-case-of-failure plan because IT'S A SUCCESS: "We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet" 😭❤ History has been made, everyone! pic.twitter.com/njgxQXclZy

— Sophia Gad-Nasr (@Astropartigirl) April 19, 2021

Aung, who is the project manager for Ingenuity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California said that the team had been talking for so long about their "Wright Brothers moment" on Mars and have finally achieved it.

After the photos of the first flight arrived back on Earth, there were cheers in the JPL control centre and Aung could be heard saying, "It's real!" Amidst the claps from her colleague, she tore up the contingency speech that was to be used in the event of failure.

In an interview with BBC, when Aung was asked whether she was surprised the flight had worked, she said that she was really not. The project manager said that they had really nailed all the equations, the models and the verification was done in the laboratory tests.

The success of the mission depended on the fact that if they had used the right equations and materials to build Ingenuity, to survive the environment of space and Mars.

She also said that they had converted the "theory says you can" to have done in real life, and it was a major first flight for the human race.

In the demonstration earlier today, the Mars helicopter rose to about a height of 3m and landed back safely managing 40 seconds of flight from the take-off to landing.