in what has been described as a wright brothers moment the first-ever powered flight by an aircraft on another planet was made monday by the mini-helicopter named ingenuity a project several former texas a&m university students who now work at nasa have been involved in for years the mars rover perseverance landed on the red planet feb 18 and its mission is to conduct tests on soil air terrain and take plenty of photographic images the rover carried ingenuity which flew about 10 feet off the ground for 39 seconds almost the same as the wright brothers first flight in 1903 in north carolina three texas a&m graduates played key roles in the flight from their offices at nasas jet propulsion laboratory (jpl) in pasadena calif keri bean who earned her bachelors degree in meteorology from texas a&m in 2010 and her masters in atmospheric sciences in 2013 is rover planner deputy team lead and an m2020 helicopter integration engineer she played a key role in the helicopter flight and works with both the helicopter and mars rover teams while the helicopter team develops their flights we interface with the rover teams on the helicopter teams behalf she said so we work with the imaging teams making sure helicopter activities are reflected in the rover planning tools and more this represents a fantastic step forward in the path of solar system exploration ingenuity is the first powered controlled flight on another planet the sojourner rover led to all of the amazing rovers were familiar with now like opportunity and curiosity and ingenuity is that first step toward future aerial craft on other planets chris salvo class of 90 is another former student who helped in the ingenuity flight my role with regards to the helicopter was on the perseverance side he said i managed the rover mechanical subsystem development which included the rover chassis mobility and remote sensing mast along with the mars helicopter delivery system (mhds) which cradled and protected the helicopter on its journey to mars then deployed the helicopter on the surface it proved to be a very difficult task to implement this highly integrated system to safely deliver this lightweight and fragile helicopter to mars he said it took the total commitment of both the helicopter team and the mhds team to make it work bob deen class of 87 is a major player in developing the images on perseverance he serves as a data scientist and lead developer for image processing – called instrument data system or ids at the jpl my job is to process images from all the cameras on the perseverance rover and this includes making mosaics and doing stereo image analysis to build 3d models of the terrain as well as general image processing archiving and applying proper calibration he said as part of this role i am peripherally involved in the ingenuity helicopter deen helped with flight zone selection and adapted some programs he originally helped write for a previous project called insight that characterized where it would be safe to land taking into account surface roughness and tilt of the terrain these programs were used as part of the site selection process he said deen also wrote the program that converts the images from the helicopter into the standard format used by the rest of the cameras on the mission the helicopter team itself does the initial extraction of the images but i put them into a form where the broader perseverance team can access them he said finally i am the lead for archiving the helicopter images to pds – the planetary data system – where they will be available to researchers and the general public alike for posterity even this limited involvement has been incredibly exciting and im proud to have played a small role in this most historic project we make a lot of history at jpl but this is the coolest one in a long time in addition dr michael tice and dr marion nachon both associate research scientists in texas a&ms department of geology and geophysics are part of the perseverance rover mission on mars tice said that although he and nachon were not directly involved in the helicopter ride the event marks a red-letter day for space technology ingenuitys flight is an amazing first achievement that opens up a whole new route for exploring mars in future missions tice said many of us are now imagining future crewed or robotic missions enhanced by drone assistants that will allow us to map out martian features that are hard to fully explore from the ground or see at high enough resolution from space the scientific implications for future missions are enormous nasa officials said that in homage to the wright brothers a piece of the original fabric taken from their plane that made the first flight in kitty hawk nc on dec 17 1903 was attached to ingenuity by keith randall texas a&m university division of marketing and communications