“The historic flight of Ingenuity, the first spacecraft on another planet, has come to an end,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a video statement. As he said, the reason was that one of the fan blades made of carbon fiber had broken. The accident occurred on January 18, when during a short vertical flight, at an altitude of one meter above the surface, Ingenuity lost contact with the Perseverance rover for unknown reasons.
As Nelson emphasized, despite operating in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere, the machine exceeded all expectations.
“This extraordinary helicopter flew higher and farther than we could have ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best, which is make the impossible possible,” he said.
The Ingenuity autonomous helicopter, which measures 1.2 meters high, 0.5 meters wide and 0.5 meters long, landed on Mars in February 2021 as part of the Perseverance rover mission. Its goal was to test the possibility of flying on Mars in an atmosphere 100 times thinner than Earth's. It was originally expected to perform up to five test flights over 30 days. Ultimately, it managed to survive for almost three years, making 72 flights that lasted more than two hours, covered more than 17 kilometers and rose to a maximum height of 24 meters and, contrary to expectations, also ended the harsh winters on Mars.
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