The First Helicopter Crash on Mars: NASA Pinpoints What Went Wrong During Ingenuity’s Final Flight

It’s been astir a twelvemonth since the record-breaking Ingenuity chopper broke a blade, ending the airborne ventures of the archetypal powered, controlled craft to instrumentality formation connected different planet. Now, NASA engineers are investigating the rotorcraft’s last flight, to amended recognize the circumstances of its end.

Ingenuity broke records connected Mars, with the Perseverance rover capturing mind-blowing video arsenic it flew supra the Martian surface. That each came to an extremity successful January 2024, and now, researchers are getting adjacent to knowing however the chopper broke apart.

Ingenuity surpassed each expectations during its three-year tenure. The chopper arrived connected the Red Planet arsenic a exertion demonstrator—merely to showcase the quality for humankind to motorboat powered, controlled flights connected different worlds. After 5 trial flights, the chopper became a scout for the Perseverance rover connected Mars, arsenic the second explored the arid situation of Jezero Crater.

Ingenuity yet operated for astir 3 years and performed 72 flights implicit that span. On its last flight, the chopper climbed to 40 feet (12 meters) supra the Martian surface, but aft 32 seconds, the chopper was backmost connected the crushed and communications had stopped.

Ingenuity (right) and its separated rotor leaf (left), astir 50 feet apart. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS

“When moving an mishap probe from 100 cardinal miles away, you don’t person immoderate achromatic boxes oregon eyewitnesses,” said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s archetypal aviator astatine NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, successful a release. “While aggregate scenarios are viable with the disposable data, we person 1 we judge is astir likely: Lack of aboveground texture gave the navigation strategy excessively small accusation to enactment with.”

Based connected photographs taken aft the flight, the squad believes that in-flight navigation errors caused “high horizontal velocities astatine touchdown,” according to the release. In different words, a clang landing that apt made Ingenuity transportation and rotation connected a sandy Martian slope. That snapped the rotor blades, with 1 leaf wholly separating from the helicopter.

Ingenuity tin nary longer fly, but it inactive delivers upwind and avionics information to Perseverance connected a play basis. NASA engineers are utilizing Ingenuity’s comparatively inexpensive outgo and astonishing durability arsenic a blueprint connected which to physique a aboriginal Mars helicopter—one that could measurement 20 times heavier than Ingenuity and alert up to 2 miles (3 km) successful a day, astir 4.6 times farther than Ingenuity’s longest flight.

“Because Ingenuity was designed to beryllium affordable portion demanding immense amounts of machine power, we became the archetypal ngo to alert commercialized off-the-shelf cellphone processors successful heavy space,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s task manager, successful the aforesaid release. “We’re present approaching 4 years of continuous operations, suggesting that not everything needs to beryllium bigger, heavier, and radiation-hardened to enactment successful the harsh Martian environment.”

Ingenuity was the opening of a hopefully fruitful probe of the cosmos utilizing powered, controlled aircraft. The Martian chopper went beyond what was expected, and set the stage for aboriginal drones poised to supply never-before-seen views of the worlds and moons that marque up our star system.