Mars helicopter Ingenuity crashes: NASA pays tribute to it

The Ingenuity Helicopter’s Extraordinary Mars Adventure Has Come to an End. The first land-based plane to fly to the surface of another planet crashed, leaving it unable to fly again.

NASA visually confirmed what they feared most: On its final flight, a too-hard landing broke one of Ingenuity’s blades, preventing it from flying again. The shadow in this photo, taken by the helicopter itself, reveals it:

You can clearly see how the edge of the blade is broken. On Earth it would be easy to fix, but on Mars… there is no one to repair it.

NASA pays tribute to Ingenuity helicopter

The small Ingenuity helicopter, with a diameter of only 1.2 meters and a weight of 1.8 kilograms, went down in aviation history as first land aircraft to fly over the surface of another planet.

This was an incredible engineering challenge because Mars’ atmosphere is so different from Earth’s. It is 100 times less dense and exerts only 1% of the pressure compared to ours.

It is also necessary to take into account that Mars’ gravity and winds are very different from those on Earth. Not to mention the extreme temperatures he had to endure: up to 132 degrees Celsius below zero at night.

Given these extreme conditions and the fragility of Ingenuity itself, NASA was content to complete seven flights in 30 days. As a result, there were 72 flights over three years.. This is a real milestone.

The Ingenuity helicopter arrived on Mars on February 18, 2021., in the belly of the Perseverance rover. On April 19, he made his first flight – a simple vertical takeoff and landing. But then he made several “walks” at an altitude of tens of meters above sea level, showing us previously unseen angles of the Red Planet.

Unfortunately, on January 18, something went wrong during their last voyage.. It rose 12 meters, slid for 4.5 seconds and, as planned, fell to the ground at a speed of 1 meter per second. But something happened a meter above the ground: the Perseverance rover lost contact with the helicopter.

A few days later, NASA received an image of the shadow of the broken blade, as you can see at the beginning of the news. Ingenuity is safe on the ground, but can no longer fly.. They find out what exactly the problem was.

With the previous video, NASA wanted to pay tribute to the first plane to fly over another planet.

At 72 years old flyingwas in the air for 128 minutes, covering a distance of 17 kilometers and a maximum height of 24 meters.. It fulfilled a vital mission – to find interesting areas to explore with Perseverance.

These were three unforgettable years, but The charming and historic Ingenuity helicopter will no longer be able to fly over the reddish landscape of Mars.. He has earned a place in the history of aviation and space exploration.