Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. Space News

NASA’s Mars helicopter wins prestigious space exploration award

By

The team behind NASA’s Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, has won this year’s John L. “Jack” Swigert Jr. Award for Space Exploration from the Space Foundation. The prestigious annual prize recognizes extraordinary accomplishments in the realm of space exploration and discovery.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is conducting NASA’s current Mars mission, announced the news in a tweet on Tuesday, June 15.

Recommended Videos

Cheers for the #MarsHelicopter team! 🎉 The Ingenuity crew has won the @SpaceFoundation’s 2021 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award for Space Exploration, highlighting the rotorcraft's historic achievements on the Red Planet. https://t.co/c5Zq41K4sJ pic.twitter.com/hh5lbVf33P

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) June 15, 2021

Related

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made history in April when it became the first aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet.

California-based JPL has met multiple challenges to get this far, including designing and building a flying machine that could handle Mars’ extremely thin atmosphere, getting the helicopter safely onto the Martian surface at the end of a six-month journey from Earth, and then operating it from several hundred million miles away. The 4-pound, 19-inch-tall helicopter recently completed its seventh successful flight on the red planet as the team moves from proving it can fly to exploring how such machines can aid future missions to Mars and other planets.

“The NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has proven itself a milestone in aviation and aeronautics history by performing the first flight of a powered and controlled aircraft on another planet, allowing observation of Mars from an aerial perspective, and enabling the collection of data about conducting flight in a challenging atmosphere,” the Space Foundation said in a post on its website.

Space Foundation CEO Tom Zelibor commented, “As a multiple-time recipient of the John L. ‘Jack’ Swigert Jr. Award for Space Exploration, the NASA JPL team continues to raise the bar when it comes to extraordinary accomplishments in the realm of space exploration and discovery.”

Zelibor added, “The work of this most unique team has changed history not just on this planet, but it has also truly accomplished a feat beyond compare.”

While Ingenuity’s maiden flight consisted of little more than a hover just three meters from the ground, subsequent flights have seen it travel as far as 266 meters at up to 10 meters from the Martian surface. JPL is continuing to design new flight plans for the helicopter to fully explore its capabilities.

JPL will receive its award at the Space Foundation’s 36th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on August 23.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA has two ideas for how to get samples back from Mars
An illustration of NASA's Sample Return Lander shows it tossing a rocket in the air like a toy from the surface of Mars.

NASA has big goals for Mars. It wants to collect the first-ever samples from the Martian surface and deliver them back to Earth in an ambitious mission called Mars Sample Return. But even in its development phase, the mission has run into problems. With a ballooning budget and unrealistic time frame, NASA decided last year that it needed a new approach to the mission, and now it has announced an update. It's working on two ideas, with the best to be chosen in 2026.

“Pursuing two potential paths forward will ensure that NASA is able to bring these samples back from Mars with significant cost and schedule saving compared to the previous plan,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These samples have the potential to change the way we understand Mars, our universe, and – ultimately – ourselves. I’d like to thank the team at NASA and the strategic review team, led by Dr. Maria Zuber, for their work.”

Read more
NASA’s exciting 2024 began with a crash that ended a historic mission
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, right, stands near the apex of a sand ripple in an image taken by Perseverance on Feb. 24, 2024, about five weeks after the rotorcraft’s final flight. Part of one of Ingenuity’s rotor blades lies on the surface about 49 feet (15 meters) west of helicopter (at left in image).

NASA had a busy 2024, overseeing space station operations, monitoring a slew of ongoing missions, preparing for upcoming Artemis lunar flights, and much more.

It also began the year with a fully functioning helicopter on Mars.

Read more
NASA orbiter captures one last image of retired InSight lander on Mars
This illustration shows NASA's InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface.

NASA's Insight lander spent four years on the surface of Mars, uncovering secrets of the planet's interior, but it eventually succumbed to the most martian of environmental threats: dust. Mars has periodic dust storms that can whip up into huge global events, lifting dust up into the air and then dumping it on everything in sight -- including solar panels. After years of accumulation, eventually the dust was so thick that Insight's solar panels could no longer generate enough power to keep it operational, and the mission officially came to an end in December 2022.

That wasn't quite the end of the story for InSight, though, as it is still being used for science to this day, albeit indirectly. Recently, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) caught a glimpse of InSight from orbit, capturing the lander's dusty surroundings and showing how even more dust had built up on it.

Read more