The Wright Flyer Makes It to Space

Fabric swatches and wood slivers from the first aircraft have been included on several missions.

Tuesday, December 12, 2023 at 06:20 PM ET

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A small swatch of muslin from the lower-left wing of the Wright Flyer was placed on the underside of the Mars helicopter Ingenuity's solar panel (the dark rectangle) prior to its launch with the Perseverance rover. [Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Key Takeaways:

Parts of the Wright Flyer, the first powered aircraft, have been carried into space on multiple historic missions.
Relics from the Flyer traveled to the Moon aboard Apollo 11 in 1969 and to Mars with the Ingenuity helicopter, which achieved the first powered controlled flight on another planet in 2021.
Tragically, pieces of the Wright Flyer and an Orville Wright note were also aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger during its fatal explosion in 1986.

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Although the Wright brothers never made it off the beach in North Carolina with their Wright Flyer, parts of the first and famous powered aircraft have been to space, carried aboard spacecraft.

In 1969 pieces of the Wright Flyer’s wood and fabric went to the moon. They were carried by astronaut Neil Armstrong aboard Apollo 11. The relics were flown to the surface in the lunar module Eagle, so when the Eagle landed, so did the Wrights.