NASA thinks it’s figured out why the Mars helicopter crashed

Ahead of a afloat method study that’s expected to beryllium released successful the adjacent fewer weeks, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and AeroVironment person revealed what’s believed to beryllium the origin of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s crash connected January 18th, 2024. The craft’s imaginativeness navigation system, which was designed to way textured features connected the aboveground of Mars, was confused by a featureless agelong of rippled sandy terrain, resulting successful incorrect velocity estimates that led to a hard landing.

Relying connected distant data, including photographs taken aft the flight, the investigators judge that “navigation errors created precocious horizontal velocities astatine touchdown,” which astir apt resulted successful Ingenuity experiencing a “hard interaction connected the soil ripple’s slope,” causing it to transportation and roll.

NASA’s engineers primitively assumed that Ingenuity’s spinning rotor blades were damaged aft making interaction with the aboveground of Mars during the crash. They present judge they snapped disconnected due to the fact that “the accelerated cognition alteration resulted successful loads connected the fast-rotating rotor blades beyond their plan limits.” A portion of 1 of the rotor blades was located astir 49 feet distant from the craft’s last resting place.

Communications were mislaid during the clang arsenic a effect of excessive vibration successful the damaged and unbalanced rotor strategy that resulted successful an excessive powerfulness demand. However, contempt being permanently grounded, communications were reestablished the adjacent day, and Ingenuity “still beams upwind and avionics trial information to the Perseverance rover astir erstwhile a week,” which NASA says “is already proving utile to engineers moving connected aboriginal designs of craft and different vehicles for the Red Planet.”

Initially designed to execute lone up to 5 experimental flights implicit the people of a period connected Mars, Ingenuity operated for astir 3 years and accumulated implicit 2 hours of formation clip crossed 72 flights.