{"id":121415,"date":"2021-04-11T01:24:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T08:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/nasa-delays-mars-helicopter-flight-after-a-crucial-rotor-blade-spinning-test-ended-abruptly"},"modified":"2021-04-11T01:24:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T08:24:41","slug":"nasa-delays-mars-helicopter-flight-after-a-crucial-rotor-blade-spinning-test-ended-abruptly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/nasa-delays-mars-helicopter-flight-after-a-crucial-rotor-blade-spinning-test-ended-abruptly","title":{"rendered":"NASA delays Mars helicopter flight after a crucial rotor-blade-spinning test ended abruptly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasa-delays-mars-helicopter-flight-after-a-crucial-rotor-blade-spinning-test-ended-abruptly.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>NASA has delayed the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars helicopter after a crucial test-spin of the drone\u2019s rotor blades abruptly stopped.<\/p>\n<p>This was the last major test to make sure the helicopter would be ready for its first flight, which was originally scheduled for early Monday. Now NASA has delayed the historic liftoff \u2014 which would mark the first powered, controlled flight on another planet \u2014 to Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>For the test on Friday, Ingenuity was supposed to spin its blades at full speed while on the ground. The two pairs of blades should have spun in opposite directions at more than 2500 rotations per minute \u2014 about eight times faster than an Earth helicopter. On flight day, they\u2019ll need that speed to lift the 4-pound drone into the thin Martian atmosphere. That air has just 1% the density of Earth\u2019s atmosphere, making Ingenuity\u2019s task the equivalent of flying three times higher than the peak of Mount Everest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA has delayed the first flight of its Ingenuity Mars helicopter after a crucial test-spin of the drone\u2019s rotor blades abruptly stopped. This was the last major test to make sure the helicopter would be ready for its first flight, which was originally scheduled for early Monday. Now NASA has delayed the historic liftoff \u2014 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":465,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/465"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}