Mars helicopter Ingenuity has completed its final flight

NASA stops Ingenuity helicopter mission on Mars. The small helicopter had been flying there since 2020 and has made 72 flights since then, far more than expected. However, now one of the rotor blades is broken, ending the mission.

NASA say that it is abandoning the Ingenuity mission. This happens after the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which controls the helicopter, previously experienced problems with the vehicle. Earlier this month, JPL engineers temporarily lost contact with the helicopter. NASA then released an image of the shadow of one of the rotor blades, which appeared to be damaged. The blades rotate 2,537 times per minute and if any of them malfunction, the helicopter could be further damaged.

The space agency has therefore decided to no longer fly the helicopter. Ingenuity landed on Mars on February 18, 2020, along with the rover Perseverance. NASA will make the announcement on Sol 1000, which is how days on Mars are calculated.

Ingenuity accomplished its mission far better than NASA could have hoped. The space agency initially didn’t even know if the helicopter would be able to fly, since the density of the atmosphere on Mars is less than one percent of that on Earth. NASA hoped that the helicopter could make 5 flights in a month. Ultimately, the rover made no fewer than 72 flights over a three-year period, the highest of which reached as high as 80 feet (24 meters) above the Martian surface. In total, the helicopter had a flight time of more than two hours and covered 17 kilometers.