A small helicopter is set to be the first aircraft to fly on another planet.
Ingenuity is a 1.8kg (4lb) helicopter that will ride to Mars attached to the belly of Nasa’s Perseverance Rover and is due to arrive in February 2021.
Nasa wants to be first to demonstrate powered flight in Mars’ thin atmosphere, but that’s not so straight-forward on the Red Planet.
Blasting off from Florida, the $2.1billion (£1.6billion) Perseverance rover will dig up hunks of soil and rock in search of microscopic fossils.
Perseverance is part of Nasa’s Mars 2020 mission.
The Mars 2020 launch window opens at 7:50am ET (12:50pm BST) on July 30 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, and closes August 15.
The mission, which will liftoff aboard an Atlas V rocket, could launch on any given day during that window provided conditions are favourable.
“The duration of the daily launch window varies from day to day,” Nasa says.
“The launch windows will last approximately two hours, with a unique launch opportunity every five minutes.”
Read more
What time is the Nasa Mars launch today and how to watch Perseverance alien-hunter robot live
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/12203668/nasa-launch-mars-robot-china-perseverance-what-time-watch-live/