NASA’s Ingenuity team has said a final goodbye to the helicopter robot, receiving a final message before the team disbands – but Ingenuity is not actually dead yet, and will continue to collect data on the Red Planet.
Ingenuity is an impressive little robot, becoming the first to make a on a planet other than Earth in April 2021. That’s no easy feat, given the wildly different conditions on Mars.
“The Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1 percent the pressure at the surface compared to our planet,” NASA explained in a when Ingenuity made its first flight. “This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight.”
The helicopter – really a prototype – was only planned to make five flights over 30 Martian days, but ended up making 72 flights over 1,000. It worked so well that NASA began using it to of Mars and spot interesting areas for Perseverance to take a closer look at.
Unfortunately, on the 72nd flight, Ingenuity made an emergency landing, losing contact with Perseverance. When contact was re-established, photos from the helicopter showed that a rotor had been , and Ingenuity would not fly again.
The helicopter, though no longer able to fly, is still capable of collecting data and transmitting it to Perseverance, which in turn transmits it to Earth through . Before the Ingenuity team disbanded, they received one final message from Ingenuity and ate celebratory cake.
“With apologies to Dylan Thomas, Ingenuity will not be going gently into that good Martian night,” Josh Anderson, Ingenuity team lead at JPL said in a . “It is almost unbelievable that after over 1,000 Martian days on the surface, 72 flights, and one rough landing, she still has something to give. And thanks to the dedication of this amazing team, not only did Ingenuity overachieve beyond our wildest dreams, but also it may teach us new lessons in the years to come.”
Now resting in “Valinor Hills”, the robot’s mission will be to collect data while stationary, hopefully finding out useful information about the environment ahead of future crewed missions to the planet.