Last flight for over-achieving Mars helicopter

A 1.8kg Nasa helicopter that ran an unprecedented six dozen flights on Mars will fly no more, the US space agency said Thursday.

During Ingenuity’s most recent flight, on Jan. 18, one of the helicopter’s blades might have struck the ground while coming in for landing, permanently grounding it, Nasa said in an announcement Thursday.

Ingenuity’s mission was also meant to last about a month but spanned multiple years.

Its success could open up the opportunity for using helicopters to explore and scout other planets and moons in our solar system in the future.

“It is bittersweet that I must announce that Ingenuity — the little helicopter that could and it kept saying, ‘I think I can; I think I can’ – well, it has now taken its last flight on Mars,” Nasa administrator Bill Nelson announced in a video posted on the website X.

At the time of the Jan. 18 descent, Nasabriefly lost contact with the helicopter, but reestablished communication two days later, the agency said.

Ingenuity launched to Mars in 2020, traveling through deep space while attached to Nasa’s Perseverance rover, designed to hunt for life on the Red Planet.

The goal of the helicopter’s mission was to see if spacecraft could fly in the very thin Martian atmosphere, which is just 1% the density of Earth’s atmosphere.

After the rover successfully landed in 2021, it deployed Ingenuity on the surface of Mars, where it would go on to perform a total of 72 flights — far surpassing its goal of as many as five.

“What Ingenuity accomplished far exceeds what we thought possible,” Nelson said in the video.

NASA’s historic Ingenuity Helicopter has taken its last flight on Mars. After 72 incredible flights, that remarkable helicopter flew farther and higher than we ever thought possible. #ThanksIngenuity pic.twitter.com/eYwO9R6LY1

— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) January 25, 2024