I was up at night in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It was well after midnight in Germany, I was 12 years old, and I got special permission from my parents to stay up. I think I was up all night. I learned to dream early.

When I was just 8 years old, one of my friends had a topical encyclopedia, where one book was about the solar system. We didn’t have any high resolution photographs of any of the planets in 1964. So Mars was just a fuzzy red blob.

More than 50 years have passed, and now NASA has successfully flown the tiny helicopter named Ingenuity on Mars. To commemorate the momentous occasion, NASA included a scrap of fabric from the Wright Brothers flyer in Ingenuity. The Wright Brothers flyer was the first powered flight on Earth. Ingenuity was the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. And we got to watch it (after many light minutes of transmission delay).

See the entire experience here:

I am fascinated that we can see mountains on Mars in clear view. It’s an enormous journey from the grainy image in the encyclopedia. Mars is right now 180 million miles away, much farther than the sun, yet, we can see the little helicopter rise.

What an amazing time to be alive!