Nearly three years after the first-ever takeoff from the surface of Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has landed for the last time.
The innovative mini-copter was brought to the Red Planet in 2021 as an experimental piggyback payload tucked beneath the Perseverance rover, and conducted 72 reconnaissance flights that racked up 11 miles of total distance and two hours of total flight time.
Not bad for a 4-pound gadget that was designed to fly only five times during a 30-day primary mission.
In a video tribute released today, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called Ingenuity “the little helicopter that could.”
“It kept saying, ‘I think I can, I think I can,'” Nelson said. “Well, it has now taken its last flight on Mars.”
The last flight took place on Jan. 18. Data sent back from the craft show that it reached its planned altitude of 40 feet and began its descent at a velocity of 3.3 feet per second, which translates to 2.2 mph or 1 meter per second. But when Ingenuity was about 3 feet from the ground, it lost contact with Perseverance, which serves as a communications relay for the rotorcraft.
Communications were re-established the next day, and several days after that, imagery confirmed that at least one of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing. “It is no longer capable of flight,” NASA said today in a news release.
The cause of the communications dropout and the helicopter’s orientation at the time of touchdown are still being investigated.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed the helicopter primarily to demonstrate that a rotorcraft could operate in the thin Martian atmosphere, which has less than 1% of Earth’s atmospheric density. After flying its five demonstration missions, NASA repurposed Ingenuity to serve as an aerial scout for Perseverance.
The helicopter was built to operate during the Martian spring, but mission managers tweaked their operating procedures to make it possible for Ingenuity to keep working through Martian winter.
Now that Ingenuity is permanently grounded, the Perseverance team plans to perform final tests on helicopter systems and download the imagery and data that are still stored in the craft’s onboard computer.
NASA says the rover is currently too far away to try capturing images of Ingenuity in its final resting place — but the “little helicopter that could” is likely to inspire thousands of extraterrestrial aerial images in the years to come. The space agency is already considering missions that would send more advanced flying machines to Mars and Venus, as well as to Titan, a smog-shrouded moon of Saturn.
“It’s humbling Ingenuity not only carries onboard a swatch from the original Wright Flyer, but also this helicopter followed in its footsteps and proved flight is possible on another world,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s project manager at JPL. “The Mars helicopter would have never flown once, much less 72 times, if it were not for the passion and dedication of the Ingenuity and Perseverance teams. History’s first Mars helicopter will leave behind an indelible mark on the future of space exploration and will inspire fleets of aircraft on Mars – and other worlds – for decades to come.”
