NTSB but on Mars – NASA finds root cause of Ingenuity’s final flight
On December 11, 2024, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) published their findings on the possible cause of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s final flight on Mars. The final flight happened on January 18, 2024, which gave Ingenuity a record-breaking 72 flights, 30 times more than what was supposedly planned.
A background check of Ingenuity
[CC: Ingenuity deployed on Mars from the Perseverance Rover (NASA)]
To those who are new on the news, Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is the first helicopter sent to Mars to demonstrate flying capabilities on another planet. It was launched with the Perseverance Mars Rover on the Mars 2020 mission, which landed on the red planet on February 18, 2021. It was then deployed completely on April 4, 2021, slowly released from the underside of the Perseverance Rover until fully deployed.
The helicopter made its first flight on April 19, 2021, proving that aerial exploration on other planets is possible and opening up new possibilities for future space exploration efforts. Initially expected to fly just five times—a conservative estimate—it ended up surpassing expectations with a record-breaking total of 72 flights before its final mission, which we will discuss in this article.
Soaring for a final time
On January 18, 2024 (Sol 1035 - or the 1035th solar day on Mars), Ingenuity soared to the Martian skies for one final time. According to NASA, this 72nd flight was planned as a brief vertical hop to assess Ingenuity’s flight systems and photograph the area.
The helicopter flew for 32 seconds, reaching a hovering altitude of 12 meters (40 ft) and covering a distance of 10.303 meters (33.80 ft). At 19 seconds, it slowly descended. At the end of its flight, it landed back on the surface, but it also lost contact with the Perseverance Rover, its only communication link to Earth.
A day after that flight, Ingenuity regained communications with the Perseverance Rover, which sent the data back to Earth. Six days later, unfortunate images came back to the ground stations on Earth which showed a poor Ginny sustaining severe damage to its rotor blades, which caused the end of its flying journey on Mars.
What happened?
Just like how aircraft accidents happen on Earth, NASA investigated to determine the cause of Ingenuity's failure. The difference? They had to analyze a failure from a planet 140 million miles (225 million km) away! Without black boxes or eyewitnesses on Mars, this was a new kind of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) styled investigation.
(1) The problem started with the helicopter's navigation system, which had performed well during previous flights. However, as Ingenuity ventured into new regions of Jezero Crater, the challenges increased. The terrain became steeper and more featureless, filled with sandy ripples that provided fewer visual landmarks for the helicopter’s navigation system to track. The helicopter had difficulty accurately determining its position and velocity due to insufficient surface texture.
Imagine riding a bike on a road with clear lane markings (like a well-textured surface). You can easily stay in your lane because you can see where you are. Imagine riding the same bike on a flat, featureless surface like a smooth, sandy beach. Without visible marks to guide you, it’s hard to tell how fast you’re going or if you’re veering off track. This is exactly what happened to Ingenuity.
(2, 3, and 4) Because of these navigation difficulties, Ingenuity landed on a steep, uneven portion of the crater. The unexpected horizontal velocity caused the helicopter to pitch and roll hard upon impact. This sudden, forceful motion placed more stress on its rotor blades than they were designed to handle, leading to them snapping at their weakest points. The rotational forces (gyroscopic effect) from the fast-spinning blades caused the broken pieces to fly away from the helicopter.
How’s Ingenuity? What's next?
Despite this unfortunate accident that permanently grounded the helicopter, it’s important to remember that Ingenuity is still communicating data with the Mars Perseverance Rover and continues until the rover travels far away from the aircraft and loses connection with it indefinitely. Currently, NASA says that the spacecraft is still sending weather and avionics data, which will be useful for possible new data about future exploration on the red planet.
For future missions, NASA has also debuted in this article a new concept that serves as a follow-on to this mission. This spacecraft concept is named the Mars Chopper. Currently, this concept remains in its early conceptual and design stages. You can learn more about this future concept by watching the YouTube video uploaded by NASA-JPL, where more information is placed on the description page.
(TWS will talk more about it in another article once more information on the concept is released.)
This is KYNNMASTER 123 for The Weekly Spaceman, see you in the next one! 😊
