First Flight On Mars

On April 19, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter became the first aircraft to fly on another planet.

Our most recent package details the historic first flight of the 4-lb. robotic rotorcraft, which lasted 39.1 seconds, and its follow-up venture on April 22, and looks ahead to its future test program. The technology lays the groundwork for aerial exploration of Mars, an aeronautical feat given the air density of Mars is less than 1% of the density on Earth. See below for more.

“How do we use aerial mobility in the future on Mars, to help not just robotic exploration, but to help human exploration?”
Ellen Stofan
Smithsonian
Nov 10, 2014
"It's an honor for me to work with these guys." said ISS commander Maxim Suraev, as Expedition 41 drew to a close late Sunday.
Nov 07, 2014
Aviation Week editors discuss the failures by Orbital Sciences and Virgin Galactic.
Nov 06, 2014
Nov 05, 2014
Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to re-engine its Antares launch vehicle and use one or two alternate launch vehicles initially to meet its International Space Station resupply commitments to NASA after last week’s launch failure.
Nov 03, 2014
The lessons the Antares failure board learns will be applied to future commercial spaceflight contracts for cargo—and eventually crew—as NASA continues to shift U.S. access to low Earth orbit onto privately owned vehicles.
Nov 03, 2014
Boeing's first of four satellites for Inmarsat's Global Xpress network, has passed all of its on-orbit testing and has now been handed over to Inmarsat.
Nov 03, 2014
After astronauts install a special 3-D printer in the ISS’s Microgravity Science Glovebox and set up the high-definition video cameras that will watch its extruder and work platform from two different angles, controllers at a small startup company in California will send signals to begin making things in orbit.
Nov 03, 2014
Boeing and SpaceX are preceding apace with their plans for commercial crew space capsules, now that the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals ruled against Sierra Nevada’s protest.