NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Prototype Designed and Built By JPL Lands at the Smithsonian

NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity, engineered under the stewardship of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, landed on the Red Planet on the Perseverance rover in February 2021. On April 19 that year, Ingenuity, also called the “Marscopter,” became the first aircraft to perform a powered, controlled flight on a world beyond Earth.

Now, a prototype of this pioneering aerial marvel, also conceived and crafted in Pasadena, has found a new home: the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, affirming its place in the annals of space exploration.

A statement by the Smithsonian said its National Air and Space Museum has accepted “an aerial prototype of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter” donated to the museum by JPL. 

“This is something that I had at the top of my wish list ever since I heard that Ingenuity was flying along with Perseverance,” Matt Shindell, curator for planetary science and exploration at the National Air and Space Museum, tells SPACE.com. “I really wanted to bring into the museum at some point some piece of [the Mars Helicopter’s] development that would speak to both the process of developing this new technology and to represent that technology itself in future exhibits.”

Ingenuity, which has two rotors running on solar energy in opposite directions, is the brainchild of JPL’s ingenious engineers, who were entrusted with managing this cutting-edge technology demonstration project for NASA Headquarters. The collaborative effort draws support from NASA’s Science, Aeronautics, and Space Technology mission directorates, reflecting the agency’s multifaceted commitment to innovation and exploration.

Originally slated to fly five times, the rotorcraft has successfully completed 19 flights within a year of its landing with the rover. The flights now provide a new perspective of Martian terrain and help Perseverance’s team to plan the path ahead.

Throughout Ingenuity’s development, NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, were part of the scientific and technical team and offered substantial flight performance analysis and technical support. The contributions of AeroVironment Inc., Qualcomm, and SolAero were also instrumental, providing invaluable design assistance and major vehicle components that propelled the helicopter towards its Martian success.

On X, JPL recently posted, “Making it official: With the donation of an Ingenuity prototype to the @Smithsonian‘s @airandspace museum, the #MarsHelicopter will forever be recognized as part of aviation history.” 

In May 2016, the prototype Mars helicopter achieved the first powered and controlled free flight inside JPL’s Space Simulator, a 25-foot-wide vacuum chamber that had been evacuated and backfilled with a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere similar to that found on Mars.

The Smithsonian said the prototype joins a robust collection of Mars exploration-related artifacts, including the Mars Pathfinder prototype, the Sojourner rover back-up Marie Curie, the Mars Exploration Rover Surface System Test-Bed and a model of the Curiosity rover. 

“The Ingenuity prototype will go into storage for the immediate future and will eventually be displayed at one of the museum’s two locations,” the Smithsonian said on Friday.