Footage of a historic piece of fabric being installed by NASA's Ingenuity helicopter engineers has been shared.
Today (Monday, April 19), NASA successfully launched a miniature drone helicopter on Mars, carrying a piece of fabric from the Wright Brothers' historic first flight.
In doing so, the space agency paid tribute to Wilbur and Orville Wright, who conducted the first successful powered heavier-than-air controlled aircraft flight on planet Earth in 1903.
The helicopter, known as Ingenuity, is the very first aircraft to be launched on another plane. It carried the "small swatch of muslin material" from the lower-left wing of the Wright Brothers Flyer under its solar panel.
The fabric had previously been held at the Carillon Historical Park, in Dayton, Ohio, which is also home to the Wright Brothers National Museum.
According to NASA's photojournal, the tiny piece of cotton fabric was originally obtained by the Wright Brothers from a local department store and, at the time, was mostly used to manufacture undergarments for women.
It adds: "In the front parlor of their home, the Wrights cut the material into strips and used the family sewing machine to create wing coverings for their airplane Flyer 1, which achieved the first powered, controlled flight on Earth on Dec. 17, 1903."
The Wright Brothers' first flight may have only lasted 12 seconds, but look where we are today!
From a historic flight at Big Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina, in 1903, to another historic flight on Mars in 2021!
Ingenuity has aided NASA in demonstrating the sort of technology needed for flight on Mars. With its success today, the technology used could be employed to create advanced robotic flying vehicles that would be included in future missions to Mars.
MiMi Aung, Ingenuity’s project manager at JPL said some weeks prior to the historic achievement: "The Ingenuity team has done everything to test the helicopter on Earth, and we are looking forward to flying our experiment in the real environment at Mars.
"We'll be learning all along the way, and it will be the ultimate reward for our team to be able to add another dimension to the way we explore other worlds in the future."