See the photo from the first helicopter flight on Mars, showing the planet's surface and the Ingenuity drone's shadow

• NASA's Ingenuity helicopter flew on Mars for the first time, lifting itself 10 feet high on Monday.
• The space drone snapped a photo of its shadow on the Martian surface below as it hovered.
• NASA expects to get full video footage of the flight from both Ingenuity and the Perseverance rover.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter flew on Mars for the first time early Monday, making spaceflight history and proving that aerial exploration is possible on other planets.

During the flight, it took the photo above, showing the surface of Mars and its own shadow.

This was the first powered controlled flight conducted on another planet. The 4-pound space drone rose 10 feet above the Martian surface, hovered for 30 seconds, and descended back down.

During the short flight, a black-and-white navigation camera on its belly snapped the photo. Ingenuity's shadow is clear in the Mars dust.

"Oh, my God, it's real!" MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager, exclaimed as NASA mission control downloaded the photo.

"Everybody's really feeling it now," Taryn Bailey, a mechanical engineer for the drone, told a NASA commentator on the agency's livestream.

From a nearby overlook, the Perseverance rover, which carried Ingenuity to Mars, captured its own stunning images of the flight. Over the next few hours and days, NASA expects to get video footage from both Perseverance and Ingenuity's color camera.

"We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet," Aung told the helicopter team at NASA mission control. "We've been talking so long about our Wright brothers moment on Mars, and here it is."

Ingenuity is a technology demonstration, meant to prove that rotorcraft flight could work on Mars. On Monday it succeeded, but its mission isn't over yet.

Ingenuity is due to attempt up to four more flights of increasing difficulty over the next month, venturing higher and farther each time. Each mission is harder than the last and more likely to end in failure.

Space helicopters like Ingenuity could someday explore canyons and mountains, study large regions faster than a rover can, or even do reconnaissance for future astronauts.

"I'm sure our community will look at any and all options to bring controlled flight to bear as a tool of research and exploration," the NASA associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen told Insider ahead of Ingenuity's flight. "I'm sure they'll think of aspects that I cannot think of right now."