NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has been out of commission for a while now thanks to rotor damage that happened during its last flight. Engineers working on the helicopter gathered together for one last time in a control room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Tuesday.
The mission officially ended on January 25 but the history-making helicopter has been in communications with the Perseverance Mars rover, which acts as a communications relay. The last transmission was received through the antennas of the agency’s Deep Space Network and it was the last time the team would work together on Ingenuity.
But that doesn’t mean Ingenuity is dying — it will live out the rest of its life as a stationary testbed that collects data that can help with future Mars exploration.
“With apologies to Dylan Thomas, Ingenuity will not be going gently into that good Martian night. 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,” said Josh Anderson, Ingenuity team lead at JPL, in a press statement.
Ingenuity is the first craft to go on a powered flight on another world and it was originally designed to perform just five experimental test flights over 30 days. But it worked on the Martian surface for almost three years and flew more than 14 times the distance expected of it while logging more than two hours of total flight time.
It has a new software patch in place. Now onwards, Ingenuity will wake up every day, activate its flight computers, test the performance of its solar panels, batteries and electronic equipment. And then, it will take a picture of the Martian surface with its colour camera while also collecting temperature data with its many sensors. Ingenuity’s engineers believe this long-term data collection could help future designers of aircraft and other vehicles that will operate on the red planet.
Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
