› added 4 years ago

237

Flying a helicopter on Mars is so damn hard but NASA made it possible. For the first flight, the helicopter took off, climbed to about 10 feet (3 meters) above the ground, hovered in the air briefly, completed a turn, and then landed. It was a major milestone: the very first powered flight in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and, in fact, the first such flight in any world beyond Earth.

Being able to fly a helicopter or drone on Mars is very important as they can cover 24 kilometers in an hour. By the way, Curiosity took nine years to travel less than 25 kilometers.

Read more mashable.com

RpBl TIL New York City landmarks like Rockefeller Plaza shut out the public for 1 day each year so that they don’t risk losing property rights to “adverse possession” (squatter’s rights)
4kAPw TIL Cuba’s biggest economic export is doctors, who they lease to foreign governments for $11 billion a year, with around 50,000 Cuban doctors serving 67 different countries at any one time
BgpDb TIL Paracetamol overdose is the second most common cause of liver transplantation worldwide and the most common cause of liver transplantation in the US
rrk4 TIL there is a Japanese word, kenjataimu, for the post-orgasmic period when a man’s thoughts are no longer impaired by his sexual drive and he can think clearly like a “sage” of clear mind.
oRYb7 TIL that the US government wasted $247 billion dollars in 2022 alone ($2.4 trillion in the past 20 years) simply due to payment errors.