This NASA photo obtained on April 18, 2021 shows the agency's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter right after it successfully completed a high-speed spin-up test, captured by the Mastcam-Z instrument on Perseverance on April 16, 2021 (the 55th sol, or Martian day, of the rover's mission). - The image has been slightly processed (stretched and cropped).A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). (Photo by Handout / NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU / AFP) / "AFP PHOTO / NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/
There’s a lot happening on Mars at the moment – rovers, tiny helicopters, first-of-a-kinds.
I wasn’t terribly interested to be honest. I mean, I can barely keep up with what’s happening in my fridge, let along on planet Earth, so I was happy to leave outer space to bigger brains.
The only potential interest I had was compiling a list of people Mr Musk might like to take with him on his never-to-return space colonising mission. So I almost missed something wonderful: the Wright brothers have gone to Mars too.
Yes, a stamp-sized fragment of material from the first-ever successful powered, controlled flying machine – the 1903 Wright Flyer I – was onboard the Perseverance rover. It was taped to the underside of the solar panel on the tiny helicopter called Ingenuity, which has now made humankind’s first ever powered, controlled flight on another planet. So we come full circle.
And suddenly I found myself interested.
That a scrap of the Wright machine flew 480 million kilometres for no reason other than sentimentality, for a story to tell, for a happy ending, made my soul glad.
It’s not the first such instance either: Neil Armstrong took a little piece of the Wright plane to the moon with him in 1969.
Even in the midst of such great scientific leaps, we still cherish things that have no intrinsic, practical value, which surely says something joyful and hopeful about our species.
A friend of mine is studying archaeology and I’ve been proof-reading her essays. Much of it is theorising about the apparently inexplicable: how did this get there? Why was this article found incongruously at this site?
Why did this ancient culture put that there? Why did they expend the effort it must have taken?
Why are these random human things from (say) ancient Persia being dug up in (say) rural Ireland? I suspect the answer is much simpler than the experts think.
Why did they bring that with them? Because they could. Because we’re a sentimental old bunch.
Yes, there’s little likelihood I’ll ever travel beyond this world’s atmosphere, but right now a piece of my heart is on Mars, flying alongside that tiny space helicopter with its Wright fragment, cheered by our humanity, cheering along Ingenuity.
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