Ingenuity helicopter’s flying days cut short by featureless Martian terrain
Science & Technology

Ingenuity helicopter’s flying days cut short by featureless Martian terrain

It appears the bland Martian surface triggered a chain of events that left NASA's Ingenuity helicopter permanently grounded on the red planet. The helicopter's flying career came to an abrupt end earlier this year when Flight 72 was cut short, and communications were briefly lost. After re-establishing contact, it soon became clear Ingenuity would not be flying again – the rotor blades were damaged, and one was entirely detached. At the time, the prevailing theory was that the flight ended when Ingenuity's downward-facing camera could not pick out features on the surface. According to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), this is still the most likely scenario for what started a chain of events that left the helicopter crippled. Performing an air crash investigation from hundreds of millions of kilometers away is tricky. It's...
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