The Mars Helicopter: 17 flight slater

Last year was a big year for Linux, as the operating system played a critical role in a major achievement: the first ever powered flight on another planet. On 19 April 2021, the Ingenuity drone – or “Mars Helicopter”, as NASA call it – took to the skies of Mars. And under the hood, the on-board computer was running Linux.

Last spring, spoke to Tim Canham, the software and operations. Now, a staggering 17 successful flights later, we thought it was time to check in on the helicopter’s progress.