NASA has delayed by at least several days the first flight of its mini-helicopter on Mars after a possible tech issue emerged while testing its rotors, the US space agency said Saturday.

Ingenuity's trip, which is to be the first-ever powered, controlled flight on another planet, was set for Sunday but is now on hold until at least April 14.

A high-speed test of the four-pound (1.8 kilogram) helicopter's rotors on Friday ended earlier than expected due to an alert of a potential issue.

"The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the issue," NASA said in a statement. "Following that, they will reschedule the full-speed test."

NASA noted the copter is "safe and healthy" and had sent information back to Earth.

Initially the plan for Sunday was to have Ingenuity fly for 30 seconds to take a picture of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars on February 18 with the helicopter attached to its underside.

NASA calls the unprecedented helicopter operation highly risky, but says it could reap invaluable data about the conditions on Mars.

The flight is a true challenge because the air on Mars is so thin -- less than one percent of the pressure of Earth's atmosphere.

This means Ingenuity must spin its rotor blades much faster than a helicopter needs to do on Earth in order to fly.

After the flight, Ingenuity will send Perseverance technical data on what it has done, and that information will be transmitted back to Earth.

This will include a black and white photo of the Martian surface that Ingenuity is programmed to snap while flying.

A day later, once its batteries have charged up again, Ingenuity is to transmit another photo -- in color, of the Martian horizon, taken with a different camera.

If the flight is a success, NASA plans another no more than four days later. It plans as many as five altogether, each successively more difficult, over the course of a month.

NASA hopes to make the helicopter rise five meters (16 feet) and then move laterally.

The mission is be the equivalent on Mars of the first powered flight on Earth -- by the Wright brothers in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A piece of fabric from that plane has been tucked inside Ingenuity in honor of that feat.

Mars Ingenuity flight delayed after rotor test fails
Washington DC (UPI) Apr 10, 2021 - NASA has delayed the first flight of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter until at least Wednesday.

The agency announced the delay in a Saturday news release after a high-speed test of the helicopter's rotors abruptly stopped Friday.

The drone's watchdog timer expired as it was trying to transition the flight computer from "pre-flight" to "flight" mode, according to NASA.

The watchdog timer oversees the command sequences and alerts the system to any potential problems, preventing the system from proceeding when an issue is detected.

NASA described the helicopter as "safe and healthy" and said the Ingenuity Mars' team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the full-speed test.

Friday's test was the last major one before the helicopter's first scheduled flight.

NASA originally planned the first flight for Sunday, though results wouldn't be available until Monday due to transmission delays.

The helicopter's two pairs of blades are designed to spin in opposite directions at more than 2,500 rotations per minute.

The rotor blades need to spin about eight times faster than typical helicopters in order to power the four-pound drone through Mars' thin atmosphere, which has just 1% of the density of Earth's atmosphere.

The Mars rover Perseverance deposited Ingenuity after it landed on Mars in February.

The helicopter is designed for a 30-day demonstration, after which Perseverance is scheduled to continue on its primary mission of drilling rock samples in a search for signs of past life on Mars.

Related Links
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
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NASA space copter ready for first Mars flight
Washington (AFP) April 9, 2021
The helicopter that NASA has placed on Mars could make its first flight over the Red Planet within two days after a successful initial test of its rotors, the US space agency said Friday. The current plan for the first-ever attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet is for the four-pound (1.8 kilogram) helicopter, dubbed the Ingenuity, to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater on Sunday at 10:54 pm US eastern time (0254 GMT Monday) and hover 10 feet (3 meters) above the surface for a half-mi ... read more