PASADENA — Ingenuity — the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-built, drone-like helicopter that made history when it launched from the surface of Mars and conducted the first powered flight on another planet — has suffered damage to one of its rotors and is no longer able to fly, mission managers announced on Thursday, Jan. 25.
The news brought to an end the unexpectedly long mission of a helicopter that was designed only as a demonstration project, with original plans to make only five short flights over a 30-day period. But Ingenuity proved far more durable than ever imagined, completing 72 flights over the past three years and logging more than two hours of overall flight time.
“The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to end,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement Thursday. “That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best — make the impossible, possible. Through missions like Ingenuity, NASA is paving the way for future flight in our solar system and smarter, safer human exploration to Mars and beyond.”
The helicopter, designed and managed by JPL, traveled to Mars attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021. After detaching from the rover, Ingenuity initially suffered technical issues that delayed plans for its first test flight.
But on April 19, 2021, the 4-pound Ingenuity craft lifted off from the planet’s surface and hovered at an elevation of 10 feet before touching back down — a flight that lasted about 40 seconds but made space-exploration history as the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. The entire flight was captured on camera by the Perseverance rover.
The helicopter went on to successfully perform its four additional demonstration flights. With the device performing above expectations, JPL moved the craft into an operations mode, serving as a type of…
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