NASA and all space lovers were able to bid a final farewell to the boundary-breaking Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, after a lonely, far-off glimpse of the little craft was captured by the Perseverance Mars Rover on Sunday.
A stark picture shows Ingenuity in its final resting place among the Martian dunes after needing to execute an emergency landing and damaging one of its rotors.
Perseverance captured the scene on its Left Mastcam-Z Camera, one of a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast.
NASA announced the end of mission for Ingenuity on 25 Jan, stating the “history-making Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has ended its mission at the Red Planet after surpassing expectations and making dozens more flights than planned.”
Ingenuity landed on Mars February 18th, 2021, attached to the belly of NASA’s Perseverance rover and first lifted off the Martian surface on April 19. Always one for the dramatic, NASA attached a small piece from the original Wright Flyer on the underside of the craft’s rotors for luck in its mission to prove that powered, controlled flight on Mars was possible.
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Originally designed as a technology demonstration to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, the first aircraft on another world operated from the Martian surface for almost three years.
Ingenuity flew more than 14 times farther than planned while logging more than two hours of total flight time.
Over an extended mission that lasted for almost 1,000 Martian days, more than 33 times longer than originally planned, Ingenuity was upgraded with the ability to autonomously choose landing sites in treacherous terrain, and proved itself resilient having dealt with a dead sensor, cleaned itself after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a frigid Martian winter.
“The Perseverance rover is currently too far away to attempt to image the helicopter at its final airfield,” the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team at NASA which operated Ingenuity, wrote in a release.
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But that wasn’t to be, and a final glimpse of the little pioneer was achieved, giving the public a chance to say live long and prosper.
NASA has made its robotic explorers’ final hours extremely emotional before; when the Insight Lander “signed off” on social media by wishing encouragement for humanity.
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