The Ingenuity helicopter has been grounded.
The drone that has been documenting the skies on Mars and completed an incredible 72 flights over almost three years has taken its final flight. The news comes after the Ingenuity helicopter suffered damage to one of its rotors, meaning it can’t undertake any more missions for NASA.
It landed on the Red Planet alongside the Perseverance rover in 2021. It had a mission to complete five flights over a month, hovering at around 5 meters. Scientists wanted to prove it was possible to fly an aircraft on another world.
Due to this never being attempted before, it was expected Ingenuity would crash land. However, the small chopper exceeded expectations, even when operators at NASA pushed it to the limit of what it was built for.
Lori Glaze from NASA’s Planetary Science Division said: “Ingenuity absolutely shattered our paradigm of exploration by introducing this new dimension of aerial mobility.”
Due to it working so well on Mars, Ingenuity actually travelled 17 kilometers, which was 14 times more than planned in the preparation stages. It ended up acting as a scout for the Perserarnace rover.
It ended up exploring Mars’ Jezero Crater, helping drivers back on Earth pick the right path and areas of interest.
Ingenuity is said to still be standing upright, but one of its rotor blades has been damaged beyond repair so it won’t be up in the air again. It was forced to perform an emergency landing so its mission is now officially over.
On January 18, the team planned for Ingenuity to make a short vertical flight to determine its location after an emergency landing on a previous mission. It achieved a maximum altitude of 40 feet (12 meters) and hovered for several seconds before descending. However, just before it reached the surface it lost contact with the rover.
The next day, communications came back and images from the helicopter revealed the damaged rotor blade.
After an extended mission for almost 1000 Martin days, (33 times longer than expected) it was upgraded to be able to autonomously choose landing sites, clean itself after dust storms and deal with a dead sensor. It performed three emergency landings, operated from 48 different airfields and survived a harsh Martian winter. Originally designed to operate in spring, the cold winter nights meant the flight computer would freeze and reset. However, the team were able to redesign its operations so it could keep flying.
NASA boss Bill Nelson said: “The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to end.
“That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best – make the impossible, possible.
Through missions like Ingenuity, NASA is paving the way for future flight in our solar system and smarter, safer human exploration to Mars and beyond.”
NASA is looking into what happened to the little helicopter.
