A little helicopter finally met its end this year. NASA鈥檚 Ingenuity drone made its 72nd and final flight on Mars in January, damaging one of its rotors on landing, concluding one of the most unusual space exploration experiments in recent decades.
Having reached the surface of Mars on the Perseverance rover in 2021, the drone flew missions autonomously because the long delay in radio transmissions between Earth and Mars made direct control impossible. The idea was that a flying drone could cover more distance, more quickly, than a wheeled rover.
Ingenuity was intended to make five short flights to test the concept of exploring the thin atmosphere of Mars from aloft, but defied expectations by flying for a total of more than 2 hours and covering 17 kilometres.
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at NASA鈥檚 Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, who oversaw the Ingenuity project, says there was a great deal of scepticism when the idea was first floated. But once a 鈥渟hoestring鈥� $80 million budget was secured, the team quickly developed Ingenuity using affordable computer chips designed for smartphones and the scheme has now more than proved itself.
鈥淲e did not plan for surviving two and a half, almost three years, and no one expected it,鈥� says Tzanetos. 鈥淪he was a fighter, and she survived well past any amount of margin that people could have predicted.鈥�
Ingenuity will continue working for NASA even now it is grounded. Updated software instructs it to wake up every day to take a photograph of the surface, measure the temperature of Mars and collect data from its solar panels and electronic components.
It is hoped that this will help inform engineers of future spacecraft, although Ingenuity is now out of range of the Perseverance rover so it has no way to transmit data back to Earth. This means the information it gathers will only be recovered if a future mission passes nearby.
Other helicopter exploration projects are already being planned, such as the upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. That quadcopter drone, running on a plutonium power source, will launch in 2028 and arrive in 2034 to survey the surface and gather data.
NASA is also working on another Mars helicopter that could land itself from orbit, screaming into the planet鈥檚 atmosphere at speed before gently choosing a landing spot, then subsequently cover several kilometres a day while carrying scientific equipment.
