[imagesource: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

What you’re looking at above is the Ingenuity Mars helicopter.

Sure, that sounds reasonably impressive, but to understand why it’s being talked about around the world, one needs to consider that it’s actually the first helicopter ever designed to fly on another planet.

Currently, Ingenuity is travelling to the Red Planet aboard NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which launched on July 30.

We’ll still be waiting quite some time to see Ingenuity take to the skies, with Perseverance only scheduled to land on Mars in February next year, but it’s the southern African connection that caught the attention of Carte Blanche.

Ingenuity is the brainchild of Namibian Dr Jakob (or Japie) van Zyl, and he spoke with Derek Watts about what some have dubbed another “Wright brothers moment”, and the challenges Ingenuity will have to overcome in order to make history:

[source:carteblanche]