As Ingenuity’s mission officially draws to a close, mission scientists are still trying to determine the extent of damage to the helicopter.
NASA held a livestream on Wednesday (January 31) to honor the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, which suffered rotor damage during its most recent flight. During the livestream, mission managers revealed that all four of Ingenuity’s blades were damaged during the rough landing on the Martian surface.
Ingenuity project manager Teddy Tsanetos said NASA and JPL do not yet know what caused the damage to Ingenuity’s blades. It remains unclear whether the helicopter’s power decreased during landing, causing unwanted ground contact, or whether it accidentally hit the ground, causing a “brownout.”
Tsanetos said NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will slowly rotate the helicopter’s blades while collecting video to help the team determine the extent of Ingenuity’s damage. He added that he plans to “move it around” and adjust the angle. But Tsanetos said that no matter what these images show, the dual-rotor drone has completed its final flight and will soon end its mission.
“Helicopters like this are not designed to fly with even the slightest imbalance assistance. Our mission will be over within a few weeks,” Tsanetos said during the livestream. Ta.
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During a NASA Science Live webcast, Tsanetos and Tiffany Morgan, NASA’s deputy director for Mars Exploration Programs, praised the brave “helicopter.” Morgan explains how Ingenuity has proven to be a valuable companion for the rover, which has been exploring Mars with the Perseverance rover since landing on February 18, 2021. I explained.
This helicopter was originally designed for just five flights, completing its mission with number 72.
“This not only helped us design future missions, but it also helped Perseverance’s current mission, as it scouted forward and gave us a sneak peek into the operations Perseverance would experience. , it also allows planners to navigate the terrain “to identify potentially attractive science targets,” Morgan said.
The fact that Ingenuity was able to fly through Mars’ thin atmosphere and perform so many sorties is a real testament to JPL’s expertise and may foreshadow future missions, she said. added.
“The NASA JPL team did more than just demonstrate a technology that, if used in the future, could actually help explore other planets and be just as awe-inspiring and amazing as Ingenuity.” We demonstrated this approach,” Morgan said. .
This helicopter has far exceeded the agency’s expectations, especially the fact that it is made from off-the-shelf commercial cell phone components and represents a little-known premise of flying an aircraft on another planet. Considering that, it was.
“I couldn’t be more proud and happy for our little baby,” said Tsanetos. “This has been a lifelong mission for all of us, and we wanted to thank all the people who are here, spending their time on weekends and late nights. All the engineers, aerodynamic scientists, handcrafting this engineer aircraft.”
Morgan said NASA is already envisioning future helicopters for use on other planets and celestial bodies that would build on the foundation laid by Ingenuity and the knowledge NASA gained from this completed mission. He added that there is.
“I’m really looking forward to the future and what we can do with Ingenuity’s descendants,” she said.