Ingenuity's First Flight, Transmitting First Image ...

 

Ingenuity, the small helicopter which accompanied the Mars rover, Perseverance, took its first flight today, transmitting back a black-and-white picture of its shadow on the surface of Mars back to NASA today, just after 7 a.m ...  

Ingenuity's engineers in the control room at NASA cheered, of course - some of the engineers Zooming in from home.  

Good job, ladies and gentlemen - pretty cool stuff :)

Btw, I say ladies and gentlemen, because although the two older white men attending the meeting via Zoom are managing the project, and the chief engineer of the Ingenuity team is a young white male -  I count at least three female engineers on the young engineering team  - one of whom is a black woman, mind you :)

Look at that, Katherine Johnson - hope you're looking down and smiling, from wherever you are :)

Despite Trump and his racist supporters' trying to take us all backwards into the dark ages of ignorance, anti-science, and irrational fear, there's now a black female engineer in NASA's control room, right out in front of God and everybody - ha!

Gone are the days of yore, when you had to run to use a segregated bathroom all the way across NASA's complex in Texas, when NASA hid the race and genders of all of mathematicians and engineers contributing to space projects like Apollo.

Thank you - both for your work and for putting up with all the naysaying, the ignorance, the irrational fear, and the hatred, simply based on the color of your skin and your gender ... 

Video of the cheer moment isn't yet available on YouTube, but you can see the moment here, through this link :)