The Wright Stuff

We talked before about when an astronaut, against all regulations and good sense, packed a corned beef sandwich in his gear as he went into space. It's not so much that it seemed like a fraternity-prank sort of thing to do, but spaceships really need to have a pure atmosphere, and a little crumb of bread or a caraway seed from the rye bread could cause problems up there. So, no. 

But on the recent excursion that Perseverance took to Mars, they packed up a little surprise for the world.

The little surprise was a small piece of the fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer, the first airplane. The helicopter is nicknamed Ingenuity. It rode to Mars along with the rover from Perseverance.

Sometime very soon - between now and April 8 - the plan from NASA is for Ingenuity to take the first powered, remote controlled flight on another planet. In the words of Bobby Braun, the director for planetary science at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that will be a real “Wright brothers’ moment.”

Wilbur and Orville Wright were from Dayton, Ohio, and that's where they have the Carillon Historical Park. That museum donated the postage-size piece of muslin from the plane’s bottom left wing.

In 1903, the Wright plane flew 12 seconds for a distance of 120 feet. This little bit of the wing that went aloft that day just traveled 300 million mile to Mars, And Steve Lucht, curator of the Carillon Park, said the cloth had the blessing of the Wrights' great-grandniece and great-grandnephew.

“Wilbur and Orville Wright would be pleased to know that a little piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by barely one quarter of a mile, is going to soar into history again on Mars!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright* said in a statement provided by the park.

It's just a wee little helicopter, all of 4 pounds, and the goal is to have it rise 10 feet in the extremely thin Martian air. Imagine controlling that from 300 million miles away. Imagine how long that cord is! 

The swatch is attached to the underneath part of the 'copter's solar panel, seen below. 

*Stephen Wright is not to be confused with comedian Steven Wright, who said, "I went to a fancy French restaurant called 'Deja Vu.' The headwaiter said, 'Don't I know you?'"