NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent the last few years exploring Mars with its flying robot companion, but the Ingenuity helicopter has been grounded for good. Perseverance still has a lot of science to do, but it took one last longing look back at the iconic aircraft. This may be the last image we ever get of Ingenuity, sitting forlorn amid the rolling dunes of Mars.
Ingenuity rode to Mars attached to the underside of Perseverance. NASA deployed the helicopter several weeks after the rover arrived, hoping to get five flights out of the drone before its off-the-shelf hardware gave out. This robot, which was built only as a technology demonstrator, managed an impressive 72 flights over the course of almost three years.
Perseverance is continuing to climb higher on the ancient river delta in Jezero crater, but it snapped a picture behind it on Feb. 4 (Sol 1052). The full photo (processed by designer Simeon Schmauß) shows some small rocks in the foreground, giving way to smooth dunes of Neretva Vallis in the background. And there’s Ingenuity, the amorphous blob near the center. You can see the craft’s solar panel on the top, along with the rotors, main body, and landing legs. The damage that ended Ingenuity’s run is not visible from this distance.
The issues for Ingenuity began on Flight 71, which ended early when the vehicle lost ground tracking. The team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory decided to make Flight 72 a short one to gather data on the potential issue. This time, however, Ingenuity lost contact and experienced a hard landing that damaged one of the rotor blades. That spelled the end of its mission as even a small imbalance in the high-speed blades would cause the helicopter to spin out of control.
NASA says that the smooth dunes you see around the helicopter’s final resting place were likely its undoing. Ingenuity used a camera to track the movement of terrain below, but the featureless dunes confused the navigation system. This is no doubt something NASA will address in future flying Mars drones, which it has already proposed as part of the Mars Sample Return mission. Although, it’s unclear what form that mission will actually take in the face of budgetary and managerial confusion.
Watching Ingenuity defy expectations and zip around Mars was a much-needed respite from the trials and tribulations of space exploration closer to home. Rockets like the Space Launch System and Starship are taking longer to develop than expected, and lunar landers are failing left and right. You were a real one, Ingenuity.
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