Disaster on Mars. We learned new facts
In January, NASA announced that after almost three years on Mars, the Ingenuity drone, which was part of the Perseverance rover, had failed. The damage turned out to be greater than initially expected.
We informed about this case over a month ago. On January 18, 2024, NASA lost contact with the Ingenuity drone. It happened moments before it landed. Communication was restored within 2 days and it quickly turned out that the vehicle would not be able to perform further flights. Now NASA has released additional information.
End of flights on Mars
Initially, the US space agency reported that one of the rotor blades was damaged. The shadow it cast was visible in the photo. Based on the photos, we learned that the blade was broken. Due to this, the drone was unable to continue its mission.
Now additional facts have come to light. During one of its passes on February 25, the Perseverance rover captured a photo of a damaged drone. It turned out that the problem was not just a broken rotor blade. At least one of them was completely severed. The damage is much greater than expected a month ago.
This does not change the fact that Ingenuity did much more work than the engineers expected. According to the original plan, it was supposed to survive on Mars for only 30 days. Ultimately, it took almost 3 years for this to happen. During this time, the drone made as many as 72 flights, during which it covered a total of 17.7 km in 129 minutes.
