NEW DELHI: Nasa‘s Perseverance Rover took a picture of the broken Ingenuity Mars helicopter lying motionless on the sandy dune of the Red planet, the Space reported.
The photo was taken on February 4, 2024, at 1.05 pm local mean solar time, just over two weeks after it sustained mission-ending damage.
The copter that had made history by achieving the first powered flight on another world, ended its 3-year mission on Mars after sustaining rotor damage.
Ingenuity’s rotors were damaged during a flight on January 18, when it landed on a featureless, “bland” area of sandy Martian surface.
As the copter was no longer capable of flight, the mission was brought to an end. However, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is looking into the damage to Ingenuity’s blades.
Ingenuity landed alongside Perseverance rover on February 18, 2021. Taking to the Martian skies in April 2021, Ingenuity made history.
Since then, the Ingenuity-Perseverance duo has been studying a region known as Jezero Crater, finding evidence of ancient reservoirs of water on the Red Planet that may have once supported life billions of years ago.
Calling it “mission of a lifetime”, Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity Project Manager at JPL said, “We couldn’t be prouder or happier with how our little baby has done.”
Nasa is constructing another drone, the nuclear-powered Dragonfly, which will eventually explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, expected to be launched by 2028.
The photo was taken on February 4, 2024, at 1.05 pm local mean solar time, just over two weeks after it sustained mission-ending damage.
The copter that had made history by achieving the first powered flight on another world, ended its 3-year mission on Mars after sustaining rotor damage.
Ingenuity’s rotors were damaged during a flight on January 18, when it landed on a featureless, “bland” area of sandy Martian surface.
As the copter was no longer capable of flight, the mission was brought to an end. However, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is looking into the damage to Ingenuity’s blades.
Ingenuity landed alongside Perseverance rover on February 18, 2021. Taking to the Martian skies in April 2021, Ingenuity made history.
Since then, the Ingenuity-Perseverance duo has been studying a region known as Jezero Crater, finding evidence of ancient reservoirs of water on the Red Planet that may have once supported life billions of years ago.
Calling it “mission of a lifetime”, Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity Project Manager at JPL said, “We couldn’t be prouder or happier with how our little baby has done.”
Nasa is constructing another drone, the nuclear-powered Dragonfly, which will eventually explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, expected to be launched by 2028.
