If you think of space travel and how humanity's sending spacecraft to Mars or launching and landing rockets in lower-earth orbit, these feats are nothing short of astonishing.?
But all this wouldn¡¯t have been possible without the contribution Wilbur and Orville Wright made to this world with the invention of the very first aircraft.
And to celebrate and honour this feat, NASA with its Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity helicopter, sent a small swatch of fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer all the way to Mars. The swatch has now travelled a 300 million mile journey to the red planet after it was offered by the Wright brothers¡¯ great-grandniece and great-grandnephew.?
The swatch was part of the original aircraft Wright Flyer I that¡¯s currently resting at the Carillon Historical Park in Dayton Ohio after NASA requested it. It¡¯s a piece of muslin cloth clipped from the aircraft¡¯s bottom-left wing.
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Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement provided by the Carillon Historical Park, "Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to know that a little piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by barely one-quarter of a mile, is going to soar into history again on Mars!"?
Surprisingly this isn¡¯t the first time a part of the first aircraft to fly has gone to space. A fragment of the wood used to make the aircraft flew to the moon with Neil Armstrong aboard Apollo 11 in 1960. Moreover, in 1998, a swatch also accompanied John Glen into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery.?
It seems as if it¡¯s like a good-luck charm for NASA that it wants closest to them at the most challenging and epoch-breaking moment in human space exploration. And it¡¯s truly understandable why they¡¯d want it to accompany Ingenuity to Mars.?
What NASA is doing with the Ingenuity helicopter is nothing short of a ¡®Wright brothers moment¡¯ as this will also be the first time an aerial vehicle made on Earth will take flight on Mars. The aircraft is expected to take its first flight on April 8, 2020.?
The roughly two-kilogram aircraft will attempt to rise around 10 feet into the incredibly thin Martian atmosphere and NASA will gradually push its limits with longer duration flights over the course of a month.