NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter made its first flight over the red planet on Monday, the agency said. 

The first flight was originally scheduled on April 11, but was postponed as engineers need to work on preflight checks and solve a command sequence issue.

"Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight – the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet," announced an engineer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the control room cheered.

A short clip sent back by the Perseverance rover showed the four pound chopper grounded at first, hovering three meters above the Martian surface, then touching back down. 

Ingenuity itself sent back a still black-and-white image from its downward pointing camera, showing its own shadow cast on the surface. 

Lead engineer MiMi Aung said to her team "We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet!"

"We've been talking so long about our Wright brothers' moment on Mars, and here it is," she added. 

The first powered flight on Earth was achieved by Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  

A piece of fabric from that plane has been tucked inside Ingenuity in honor of that feat.

(With input from AFP)