Time flies! NASA's Perseverance rover has landed on Mars for almost two Earth months! Its partner – the Mars robotic helicopter Ingenuity has been released from the rover to the Martian surface. It is getting ready for its maiden flight around 11 April to demonstrate the technology of airborne scouting and prepare to explore other planets in the future.

If the flight is successful, Ingenuity will be the first man-made object that flies on planets other than the Earth. With a price tag of US$85 million, Ingenuity is charged and powered by solar energy and each flight can last for 90 seconds. The atmospheric pressure of Mars is very low: less than 1% of Earth's, which makes the flight a challenge to the engineers. So for the first flight, the helicopter will hover only a few feet up in the Martian air for around 20 to 30 seconds. After that, the team hopes to fly it higher and longer.

Perseverance is not idle too: it supports the flight operations, takes images, collects environmental data and connects the helicopter to the Earth's mission control.

Perseverance landed at Jezero Crater on 18 February 2021. It is NASA's cutting edge Mars rover for the "Mars 2020" mission. The mission will test oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere, collect and seal the Martian rock and soil samples.

Starting from 8 April, NASA will run a series of online briefings to cover the latest news on the helicopter's operations and findings. Please refer to the timetable here (mind the time zones): https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Watch-Online