Arnold Schwarzenegger is a national treasure. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say he’s an international treasure, bordering on interplanetary. NASA is about to conduct the first ever powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on a planet other than Earth and Arnold has taken to social media to provide some words of encouragement.
In the wee hours of 3:30am on April 19th, NASA will begin the flight of a small helicopter named Ingenuity. The 4 lbs helicopter arrived along with the Perseverance Rover back in February of this year. This flight was supposed to have taken place a week ago on April 11th, but a command sequence issue pushed the flight back until NASA engineers were able to figure out a fix.
With the fix in place, it looks like this historic test of powered flight in Mars’ atmosphere is finally going to happen. Who better to cheer on the event than the man who can “totally recall” what Mars is like, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In a mid-evening Twitter, former California governor (and possibly Mars-based secret agent of “Total Recall“), wanted to do his part to encourage NASA to “GET YER ASS TO MARS,” out of pure excitement. Of course, he then realized that they’re already on Mars, so he had to yell out another encouraging phrase:
Yes, the immortal line “GET TO DA CHOPPA!” from “Predator,” you can never accuse Arnold of lacking in self-awareness. The man has made a mythology around himself based on his memorable one-liners and emphatic yelling. Not to mention, let’s face it; when Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Alan “Dutch” Schafer himself, tells you to get to the choppah…you GET TO DA CHOPPA!
In all seriousness though, we here at Nerdbot have made no secret about out love and appreciation for NASA and all of its endeavors. It’s because of their time, dedication, experiments and research that we continue to learn and grow in appreciation of this incredible universe we live in. We join Arnold in his encouragement of NASA, and look forward to seeing the results of Ingenuity’s first flight.
Though the lift-off will be taking place at 3:30 A.M. the flight data won’t arrive until approximately 6:15 A.M. EST on the morning of the 19th. NASA will be live-streaming the images of the flight through the official NASA website. While there’s no word on whether or not Arnold will be turning into the livestream himself, we do know that his affection for helicopters is highly encouraging.
