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:

Pieces of the Wright Flyer's wood and fabric have made multiple historic journeys into space.
Relics from the Flyer traveled to the Moon aboard Apollo 11 in 1969 and were tragically lost in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
Most recently, a piece of the Wright Flyer's fabric was carried to Mars by the Ingenuity helicopter, participating in the first powered controlled flight on another planet.

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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.