Ingenuity breaks down after 72 missions

“The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to an end,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. the end of the life of this small helicopter, which occupies a significant place in history space exploration due to the need for controlled flight in the difficult atmosphere of the Red Planet during numerous successful missions.

Mission 72 was a bitter farewell for this little drone. In the middle of the flight he lost contact with his companion and, although he soon restored it, Recent images showed the blades breaking. which prevents it from taking off again to continue studying the surface of the red planet.

This Mars helicopter has completed 72 flights since arriving on Mars in 2021. As if it were a football derby, half the world was thrilled by the final minutes of the Perseverance rover’s landing on Mars in February of that year and how it happened. Later, Ingenuity was deployed and was considered one of the greatest scientific achievements in the exploration of the neighboring planet.

His last flight

On January 18, he prepared to make a short check flight. “The flight was designed as a quick vertical takeoff to test the helicopter’s systems. after an unscheduled early landing on a previous flight” NASA explains. The data shows that everything went according to plan, the helicopter reached a maximum altitude of 12 meters and flew for 4.5 seconds before beginning to descend at a speed of 1 meter per second.

NASA engineers looked for any flaws in this test flight and quickly found them. Before setting foot on Martian soil again, At an altitude of almost 3 meters, communication between Ingenuity and the Perseverance rover was lost.. More than 24 hours later, this connection was restored, but Ingenuity never returned to normal.

The small helicopter sits vertically on the surface of Mars and maintains active communication with control on Earth, as well as with its Perseverance satellite. However, The “injury” prevents the robot from taking off again and continuing its missions.. Images of the Jan. 18 flight sent back to Earth this week show that at least one of its rotor blades was damaged during landing and it is no longer capable of flight.

The cause of the communication failure and the orientation of the helicopter during landing are still being investigated. What the agency has no doubt about is that the helicopter will not fly again.

Flight for many hours

This small device weighs 680 grams on Mars (1.8 kilograms on Earth) and has a wingspan of 1.2 meters, marked by propellers. Its energy system is based on a series of solar panels, which in turn power lithium batteries, They provide about 90 seconds of flight time for each Martian day.

Ingenity spent a thousand Martian days on the planet, more than 33 times the time originally planned for its mission. During this time, he completed 71 missions, 14 of them as planned, with a total flight time of more than two hours. The company has also improved its systems to be able to select autonomously. landing sites on unstable terrain.

But his life on Mars was not easy. He had to face dust storms that completely covered him. survived the planet’s freezing winter and made up to three emergency landings. During the Earth summer of 2023, it remained without contact with the outside world for up to 60 days, and during the Martian winter, “power outages” forced the team to change Ingenuity’s winter operations so it could continue flying.

“It is unfortunate that Ingenuity not only carries an example of the original Wright Flyer (the first aircraft built by the Wright brothers), but also that this helicopter followed in its footsteps and demonstrated that flight is possible in another world,” said the project manager Ingenuity by Teddy Tzanetos of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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