Ingenuity mission ends after 72 trips to Mars

He had to make a maximum of five flights, and he didn’t have everything with him. But he did it. And he achieved it: no more and no less than 72 eggs. However, the Ingenuity Mars helicopter will not fly again. Unfortunately, at least one of the four blades of the two counter-rotating rotors was seriously damaged during the last landing and will no longer be able to fly. Everyone expected Ingenuity to fail sooner or later, but the paradox is that although it will no longer fly, the little robot continues to work as if refusing to die. Ingenuity launched from the belly of the Perseverance rover on July 30, 2020, and reached the surface of Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. On March 21, the helicopter’s protective cover was ejected and left on the ground. The helicopter elements then gradually unfolded as it hung at the bottom of the rover. On April 3, on the 44th sol of the mission, Ingenuity finally set foot on Martian soil, falling from the belly of Perseverance and breaking the 13 centimeters that separated it from the ground. The little flying robot became dependent on its batteries, formalizing its mothership’s independence.

April 19, 2021 was a historic day. At 19:34 UTC Ingenuity made its first jump, the first powered flight on another world. This first flight lasted 39.1 seconds and rose to an altitude of up to 3 meters when its rotors exceeded 2,500 rpm. The helicopter took off and landed again at the same point, called “Wright Brothers Field”. Ingenuity had to make only five flights so as not to interfere with Perseverance’s scientific work – the rover team was initially very reluctant to include this prototype in their mission, although they eventually smoothed things out – and the first four flights took off and landed in space. the same area. On its fourth flight, Ingenuity moved horizontally 266 meters round trip. On the fifth flight, on May 7, Ingenuity landed for the first time at a different location, Airfield B. As of the fifth flight, NASA had completed the technology demonstration phase and, given the success of operations, decided to continue flights. at a new stage called “operations demonstration”. Although Ingenuity flew higher, further and faster, it was never more than a kilometer away from Perseverance to communicate with the rover, since the helicopter cannot communicate directly with Earth.

Ingenuity moved at its own pace, leading or following Perseverance. On April 19, 2022, Ingenuity flew over the remains of the ship. back shell Perseverance’s heat shield and parachute. On January 6, 2024, Ingenuity made its 71st flight, but made an emergency landing after reaching a height of 12 meters. While flying over a featureless sandy terrain, the black and white VGA navigation camera operating at 30 MHz was unable to identify enough rocks or landmarks to navigate safely and decided to abort the flight. On January 18, mission leaders decided to make another small jump of half a minute and 12 meters in height without horizontal displacement to check the status of the systems. Ingenuity took off on its 72nd flight and, after reaching an altitude of 12 meters, remained stationary in the same position for 4.5 seconds before beginning its descent at a speed of 3.6 km/h. Unfortunately, at this point, the navigation system became disorientated again and likely performed an evasive maneuver, thinking it was moving horizontally relative to the ground, when in fact its horizontal speed was zero. As a result, one of the shovels hit the ground and was damaged. At the same time, communication with the rover and, consequently, with the Earth was lost.

The next day the connection was restored and everything seemed to be fine, but when the images came back from the camera, you could see that the shadow of one of the blades had the wrong profile. With a damaged blade and stuck in terrain unfavorable for navigation, NASA decided Ingenuity could not continue flight, and on January 25 it announced the official end of the mission as the first helicopter to fly across the skies of Mars. It’s unlikely that Perseverance will come close to seeing the condition of the rotors in detail, since let’s not forget that Ingenuity has always tried to minimize interference with the rover’s science mission, but at least it will take some kind of image from a distance of more than 200 meters. . Ingenuity’s adventure on Mars has come to an end. Now we just have to wait for NASA to turn it off for good.

During its history, Ingenuity has completed 72 flights, covering a total of 17 kilometers. In total, it was in the air for more than two hours, 128.8 minutes, reaching a maximum height of 24 meters and a maximum speed of 36 km/h. Surviving this long on Mars is a huge achievement because the icy Martian nights put significant stress on the electronics of any spacecraft. Ingenuity is the only Mars mobile probe that lacks plutonium-238 heaters (RHU) – along with China’s Zurong rover – and yet it had to suffer mechanical rotor damage to stop. As if that weren’t enough, Ingenuity was designed to fly in Jezero’s spring temperatures rather than winter, but the mission team managed to get it to fly in colder temperatures as well. Flying on Mars, with an atmosphere only 1% as dense as Earth’s, is no easy feat. JPL’s small experimental helicopter, weighing just 1.8 kg, was able to achieve this thanks to its relatively large rotors with a diameter of 1.2 meters. Ingenuity has a small solar panel that charges the lithium-ion battery and provides about 350 watts of power, which is enough for flights of about 90 seconds over distances of up to 300 meters with a typical altitude of about 5 meters. . Ingenuity is equipped with a Linux-based operating system that runs on two small computers: one for navigation, with a quad-core 2.26 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, and another computer for flight tasks, with an ARM Cortex R5 microcontroller. And all this for just $85 million.

Due to the success of Ingenuity, NASA decided to include two helicopters in the next probe of the MSR program (Returning a sample from Mars) to bring samples from Mars to Earth. These helicopters, SRZ (Sample evacuation helicopter), they will carry a robotic arm to collect samples left behind by Perseverance and deliver them to the SRL probe (Sample search lander), and then send them into Martian orbit, and from there to Earth. They will act as a plan B in case Perseverance fails (only one helicopter can fly due to budget issues). Similarly, China and India are considering including helicopters in their next mission to Mars, which in China’s case will be another sample return mission (Tianwen-3). Without Ingenuity’s expertise, no one would have thought of including helicopters in these missions. Ingenuity was born as an experimental prototype and became a legend in planetary exploration.