The first piece of the Wright Brothers, the first plane is now on Mars

Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) – Part of the Wright brothers’ first plane is on Mars.

NASA’s Experimental Martian helicopter, released by the space agency on Tuesday, has a small switch of fabric from the 1903 right flyer. A helicopter called Ingenuity rode the Red Planet with a Perseverance rover that arrived last month.

The ingenuity will attempt the first operated, controlled flight to another planet as early as April, which will mark “the moment of the Wright brothers,” noted Bobby Brown, director of planetary science at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, the hometown of the rights of Ohio, donated a postage-sized piece of muslin, from the bottom left wing of the plane, at the request of NASA.

With the blessings of the Wright brothers’ great-grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Swatch traveled 300 million miles to Mars, said Steve Luche, the park’s curator.

“Wilbur and Orville Wright will be happy to know that one of their little pieces from 1903, the Wright Flyer I, the machine that started the space age barely a quarter away, is making history again on Mars!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement issued by the park.

Orville Wright was on board on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for the world’s first operated, controlled flight. The brothers made four flights that day, taking turns.

A piece of Wright Flyer wood and fabric flew to the moon in 1969 with Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11. He also orbited the space shuttle Discovery with John Glenn in 1998. Both astronauts were from Ohio.

NASA’s 4-pound (1.8 kg) helicopter will attempt to hover 10 feet (3 m) in extremely thin Martian air on its first hop. Five higher and longer flights are planned during a month.

The material is tapped on a cable under the helicopter’s solar panel, which is topped off like a graduate’s mortarboard.

For now, the ingenuity remains attached to the rover’s belly. A defensive shield flew away over the weekend, part of which spun out a spindly, long-legged helicopter.

The helicopter airfield is right next to the rover’s landing site in the Jezero Crater. The rover will observe test flights from a distant perch, before proceeding with its own mission: the discovery of signs of ancient Martian life. Rock specimens will be kept for the eventual return to Earth.

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