Ingenuity, NASA’s helicopter on Mars, is seriously damaged. A new image of Perseverance shows how damaged the small aircraft is after its last crash landing.
Ingenuity, NASA’s helicopter on Mars, will never be able to fly again. During its 72nd flight, the aircraft had to crash land, irreparably breaking its blades. The Perseverance rover, which had placed the small helicopter on Mars, will have to leave it behind. Before leaving it to rest alone forever on the Martian dunes, Perseverance takes a few last photos of Ingenuity immobilized on Mars.
A new, more detailed image of the helicopter was obtained on February 25, 2024 by Perseverance, with its SuperCam (the instrument housed on the “head” of the rover). Reworked versions of this raw image acquired on Mars were then published on X, by the doctor in planetology Thomas Appéré and the design student Simeon Schmaußfrom the Munich University of Applied Sciences.
An Ingenuity blade rests 15 meters from the helicopter on Mars
“ The SuperCam instrument’s RMI camera photographed Ingenuity over the Valinor Hills dune field, from where it will not take off again. We can clearly see that the helicopter is missing one blade and that the other two are damaged. », describes Thomas Appéré. “ Until today, we only had lower definition Mastcam-Z images of the damaged helicopter “, complete Simeon Schmauß.
The latter notes that several images sent by the rover show where is the missing blade of Ingenuity, i.e. “ 15 meters southwest of the helicopter “. The blade that came off is located “ behind the ripple of sand on which Ingenuity rests “.
If some still doubted it, these images confirm that it is now impossible to fly Ingenuity again in the Martian sky. The blade torn off the upper part of the aircraft would make any attempt at flight futile. This time, there is no longer any hope of recovering Ingenuity on Mars for NASA.
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