It has been almost a year since NASA announced the retirement of the Ingenuity space helicopter on its mission on Mars, and now the space agency believes it has the reason for what happened to the rotorcraft. The astronomers and its pilots announced via a recent statement that they have leads on what may be the reason for Ingenuity's blades suffering from damages that rendered it unable to fly after its last mission.
The investigation behind NASA's Ingenuity took the space agency almost eleven months to determine the cause, but the team is yet to publish its full technical report on its final flight, coming in several weeks.
NASA Ingenuity Space Helicopter's Crash on Mars Now Unveiled
According to a new press release by NASA, engineers from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), with help from AeroVironment, completed its detailed assessment of the agency's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter which had its final flight last January 18, 2024. The team detailed key information regarding Ingenuity's climactic last flight on Mars, particularly with the reason behind the rotorcraft's ultimate demise.
Ingenuity's Flight 72 saw the Mars helicopter perform a 'vertical hop' which was meant to only fly the rotorcraft for a brief moment to assess its flight systems and capture the area, but on its way down, the machine suffered damages that led to it being its final mission.
According to JPL's Håvard Grip, "While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with."
Read Also: NASA's Perseverance Rover Discovers Unusual ‘Popcorn’-Like Textures on the Surface of Mars
Ingenuity Is Still Decommissioned, But It Won't Be the Last
Because of its inability to track the surface, Ingenuity reportedly suffered from 'navigation errors' which caused it to land on high impact on the sand ripple's slope, which later led to the loss of communications with the rotorcraft. Because of the impact, NASA regarded that all four of its rotor blades snapped at their weakest point and spelled the end for the spacecraft.
Despite this, Ingenuity still in almost three years, went on 72 flights and recorded as much as two hours of total time. It is known that this would not be the last from NASA and other aspiring space companies to deploy a space helicopter on future missions.
The First Rotorcraft on Mars, Ingenuity
NASA and the Perseverance Mission on Mars looked to push the boundaries of their explorations on the neighboring planet as not only did it bring a new rover, but the company also sent a remote-controlled helicopter called Ingenuity. Both Percy and Ingenuity landed on Mars back in April 2021 featuring the $85 million rotorcraft which is a first for the space agency's Martian exploration.
There had been several challenges during Ingenuity's run as NASA's premier space helicopter, as the historical spacecraft faced different seasons on Mars including its so-called winter. Additionally, Mars is also infamous for the harsh environment that is common on the planet with its destructive 'dust storms' that caused Ingenuity to hibernate for quite some time to conserve power.
Ingenuity's mission on Mars is a novel take for NASA as it only previously deployed rovers that can traverse its surface, but not with a rotorcraft that can fly above it and gather data in the process. Almost a year later, NASA now believes that it unlocked the mystery behind Ingenuity's crash that led to its 72nd flight to be its last, and there is more to learn about the helicopter come its full report.
