It’s been just about a 12 months for the reason that record-breaking Ingenuity helicopter broke a blade, finishing the airborne ventures of the primary powered, managed plane to take flight on some other planet. Now, NASA engineers are investigating the rotorcraft’s ultimate flight, to raised perceive the cases of its finish. Ingenuity broke information on Mars, with the Perseverance rover taking pictures mind-blowing video because it flew above the Martian floor. That every one got here to an lead to January 2024, and now, researchers are getting as regards to figuring out how the helicopter broke aside. Ingenuity surpassed all expectancies right through its three-year tenure. The helicopter arrived at the Crimson Planet as a era demonstrator—simply to show off the power for humankind to release powered, managed flights on different worlds. After 5 check flights, the helicopter turned into a scout for the Perseverance rover on Mars, because the latter explored the arid surroundings of Jezero Crater.
Ingenuity in the long run operated for just about 3 years and carried out 72 flights over that span. On its ultimate flight, the helicopter climbed to 40 toes (12 meters) above the Martian floor, however after 32 seconds, the chopper used to be again at the flooring and communications had stopped. 
Ingenuity (proper) and its separated rotor blade (left), about 50 toes aside. Symbol: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS “When working an coincidence investigation from 100 million miles away, you don’t have any black bins or eyewitnesses,” mentioned Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s first pilot at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a liberate. “Whilst a couple of eventualities are viable with the to be had information, we’ve got one we consider is in all probability: Loss of floor texture gave the navigation gadget too little data to paintings with.”
According to images taken after the flight, the group believes that in-flight navigation mistakes brought about “prime horizontal velocities at landing,” consistent with the discharge. In different phrases, a crash touchdown that most probably made Ingenuity pitch and roll on a sandy Martian slope. That snapped the rotor blades, with one blade totally keeping apart from the helicopter. Ingenuity can now not fly, nevertheless it nonetheless delivers climate and avionics information to Perseverance on a weekly foundation. NASA engineers are the use of Ingenuity’s reasonably affordable value and sudden sturdiness as a blueprint on which to construct a long term Mars helicopter—one that would weigh 20 occasions heavier than Ingenuity and fly as much as two miles (3 km) in an afternoon, about 4.6 occasions farther than Ingenuity’s longest flight.
“As a result of Ingenuity used to be designed to be reasonably priced whilst challenging massive quantities of pc energy, we turned into the primary challenge to fly industrial off-the-shelf cellular phone processors in deep house,” mentioned Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s undertaking supervisor, in the similar liberate. “We’re now coming near 4 years of continuing operations, suggesting that now not the whole lot must be larger, heavier, and radiation-hardened to paintings within the harsh Martian surroundings.” Ingenuity used to be the start of a confidently fruitful investigation of the cosmos the use of powered, managed plane. The Martian helicopter went past what used to be anticipated, and set the level for long term drones poised to offer never-before-seen perspectives of the worlds and moons that make up our sun gadget.
