After nearly three years of flying around the surface of Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter mission has come to an end. According to NASA, Ingenuity suffered rotor damage during descent on its 72nd flight and is “no longer capable of flight”.
On January 18th, the final flight of Ingenuity was going to be a simple vertical hop to determine its location after being forced to make an emergency landing on its previous flight. According to the team, the featureless terrain made navigation difficult for the helicopter and led to flight issues.
Despite the emergency landing, Ingenuity was able to land upright but lost communication with Perseverance, which serves as Ingenuity’s communication relay with NASA. The team was later able to reestablish contact with the helicopter, and a photo taken showed the rotor blade damage in shadow. It is not known at this time if more rotor blades sustained damage.
Initially meant as a tech demonstration, Ingenuity only had five flights scheduled, but it performed so well it made 72 flights, logged over two hours of flight time, and covered ten and a half miles. Ingenuity landed on Mars in February 2021 alongside the Perseverance rover. Built to fly over the surface of the Red Planet, the rotorcraft scouted areas of terrain for Perseverance to investigate.
The extended mission gave NASA the capability to investigate more areas than anticipated, proving flight is possible on other planets. As a tech demonstration, it paved the way and informed plans for similar small, flight-capable crafts.
