Ingenuity: NASA's remarkable Martian helicopter

When NASA added a drone named Ingenuity to its Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, it expected the tiny four-pound helicopter to fly a total of five very brief missions in the thin Martian atmosphere. But Ingenuity far surpassed all expectations, flying dozens of flights before suffering damage to its rotors in January. Correspondent David Pogue reports on how the tiny drone, created from off-the-shelf parts, continued to provide valuable data and images from the Red Planet three years into its mission.

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[ellisc.foleyjr]

I'm 81 yrs old and have followed the space program since Sputnik! got my attention. and marveled at The shuttles, Hubble, Webb, but I have to say "The Little copter that could" impressed me greatly and as a vet and a devout patriot, I can't express the pride I felt in that little critter and what it did. Great job to the engineers that created the "Little copter that could" ECF.

[honkeykong]

To Think, Kane Tanaka was born Jan 2nd 1903. In December of that same year, The Wright Brothers successfully made the world's first powered flight. 118 Years later, in 2021 the very first powered flight was achieved on another planet, when the ingenuity copter hovered over the surface of mars. On that date, Feb 18, 2021, Kane Tanaka was still alive at the incredible age of 118!

[kimberknutson]

I love this show so much. I sobbed through most of the story about the music festival where so many innocent people died. This story came on next, and I found my smile again. Thank you.

[oogrooq]

If engineers ran the country, everything would work better than expected.

[janusconner]

I could CRY about the Wright brothers secreted inclusion. Beyond cool!

[ywc]

I followed its journey since perseverance mars landing. It was a great human achievement. Look forward to greater things ahead

[fischkopf]

Whomever approved ingenuity should be recognized and promoted - it's not easy doing the right thing when stupid people are staring you down.

[atompunk_cosmonaut]

Also, Ingenuity was quite a bargain at only $85 million to design and develop whereas Perseverance cost just under $3 billion, and that was cheaper than Curiosity because it could reuse parts and design to some extent. Curiosity cost $3.2 billion in 2020 dollars. Nonetheless, it is for sure that both rovers are far, far more capable in terms of the science they can do than Ingenuity. They are essentially roving laboratories.

[steveconn]

Amazing they can remote such a tiny unmanned device from that distance.

[theearc]

Anybody else noticed that he said 427 at exactly 4:27 of the video?

[hera]

I always tell people, NASA does use a lot of resources but they are not wasteful with them. It may seem wasteful when it fails of course, but when it works it was worth every Penny.

[tomhools]

They should send a whole fleet of helicopters on Mars.

[patrick]

Its 80 below zero at night. Im definitely not going

[johnmcnulty]

Can't wait for that next generation of drone copters to take flight on Mars!

[delfincruz]

WOW, what a miracle and what a remarkable team accomplishment with the lucky charm ❤❤

[ravenscry]

The great cheap experiment that has provided so much help and information to the MARS project. Thank god NASA administrators approved sending it up/along . What a a great confirmation for ingenuity/creative scientific work. Yeah!

[Noneyurbusiness]

Why would anyone be against flying a drone on another planet?

[peterlundskow]

This makes me so proud of NASA. Space X etc. can take a hike as far as I'm concerned. Robotics is the way to explore the solar system, not send people on a "one way trip" to terraform another planet, & mess it up like ours. Hey, Mr. Musk why don't you spend your billions on helping get our planet back in order!

[alileevil]

Lets build a small lightweight helicopter for Mars, a planet known for dust storms. What could go wrong!

[oprahIV]

It means so much to me to see the successes of our space program in terms of national pride, but it pleases me more when I think about what it means for humanity as a whole. All of humanity stands on the shoulders of those who came before from all walks of life. All of humanity in some way led us to this point. Humanity has put man into space! We’ve put man on our own moon! We’ve sent rovers to another planet! And now we’ve flown a mini helicopter on another planet! Like, this stuff is absolutely amazing! Just imagine what we could accomplish in our own country if we saw space as the great unifier that it is. Just think what we as a species could accomplish if we all put some effort into space exploration together rather! What leaps and bounds we could make in our journey for a better world because we chose to work together to explore space. Man, what a dream. Hopefully, a dream fully realized sooner rather than later.