Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung described the successful third flight of the little 4-pound helicopter on Mars early Sunday as “super game changing” because it continues to show controlled, powered flight is possible in the aerial dimension of space above the surface of a planet.
She also could have been referring to herself and the strong push NASA has made to interest girls and women in STEM careers. Her enthusiasm for the project has been infectious, something demonstrated every time she explains the mission and the seven years it has taken to get this far even amid repeated delays before the first Ingenuity flight.
On CNN Sunday she described her message for girls and women who are following science and engineering career. She came up with a classic message for every person embarking on a career or a career change in any profession.
“When you find what you want to do, find the intersection of what you’re good at, what you like to do and also what you believe in making a change in,” Aung said.
“Find that intersection and when you find that, if you put in tons of hard work, you can turn that dream into reality. And don’t doubt yourself. Don’t let anybody doubt you. When you believe you that you can do it, absolutely do it.
“And along the way, continuously, always think critically. Think critically to be really objective. Go for your goals and nobody can stop you.”
Ingenuity’s third flight on Sunday, April 25, attained speeds and distance beyond anything demonstrated before, even in testing on Earth, NASA said. At 4:31 a.m. EDT on Sunday, it rose to 16 feet, then powered downrange 164 feet, more than half the length of a football field, reaching a top speed of 6.6 feet per second. It returned to its starting spot and landed safely.
The short third flight was captured on a 77-second color video from the Mastcam-Z imager aboard the nearby Perseverance rover. At one point, Ingenuity flies out of range before returning again on frame to finish at its landing spot.
The fourth flight is still being planned for coming days, but Aung has said she wants to push Ingenuity farther and faster in the last two flights of five that are planned. The cadence of the first three flights has been one every three or four days.
Aung, a Burmese-American engineer, works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA in Pasadena, Calif. She holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has worked on other projects in space travel and the NASA Deep Space Network.
She was born in the U.S. and moved to Myanmar with her parents at age 2, then moved back to the U.S. in 1984.