Future tech In-flight exploration
IN-FLIGHT EXPLORATION
To explore another planet faster than a rover and in more detail than a satellite, we need to fly, and the best way to do it may be to copy birds
When we first started to build flying machines, we began by copying birds. In the initial stages of human flight, numerous people tried jumping from high places with poorly designed wings, leading them to fall to their deaths – the earliest account of this is of a man named Armen Firman trying it out during the 9th century. Despite this, attempts at flapping-wing flight continued into the machine age. It wasn’t until 2010 that a team from the University of Toronto, Canada, made the first successful flight of a piloted, engine-powered ornithopter –a craft that ‘flaps’ its wings.