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A photo taken by the Perseverance rover shows NASA’s small helicopter Ingenuity sitting on the surface of Mars.
NASA announced Saturday that it has resumed contact with a small Mars helicopter after an unexpected shutdown sparked fears that the hard-working helicopter may finally be at the end of its lifespan.
The 1.6-foot-tall (0.5 meter) Ingenuity drone will arrive on Mars in 2021 aboard the Perseverance rover, becoming the first electric aircraft to fly autonomously on another planet.
Data from the helicopter is transmitted to Earth via Perseverance, but communications suddenly went out during a test flight on Thursday, Ingenuity’s 72nd launch to Mars.
“Good news today,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wrote on X (formerly Twitter) late Saturday.
The agency ordered Perseverance to “listen for an extended period of time for Ingenuity’s signals,” and said it eventually made contact with the helicopter.
“The team is reviewing new data to better understand the unexpected loss of communications during Flight 72,” it added.
NASA previously announced that Ingenuity reached an altitude of 40 feet (12 meters) on Flight 72, “to check the helicopter’s systems after making an unscheduled early landing on a previous flight.” It was a rapid pop-up vertical flight.
However, during the descent, “communications between the helicopter and the rover ended early before landing,” officials said.
JPL said Friday that Perseverance is temporarily “out of sight of Ingenuity, but the team may consider driving closer for a visual inspection.”
In response to a post on X asking whether Ingenuity could fly again, JPL said Saturday that “the team needs to evaluate new data before making that determination.”
NASA has lost contact with helicopters before, including for a painful two months last year.
The small rotorcraft weighed just 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), far exceeding the original goal of making five flights over the Red Planet in 30 days.
In total, they flew just over 10 miles (17 kilometers) and reached a maximum altitude of 79 feet (24 meters).
Its longevity has proven to be remarkable, especially considering that it must survive the glacially cold Martian nights while staying warm through solar panels that charge its batteries during the day.
In conjunction with Perseverance, it served as an aerial reconnaissance aircraft to help its companions on wheels search for possible signs of ancient microbial life.