NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity has bitten the dust after three fruitful years of exploration on the Red Planet. According to NASA, the aircraft suffered damage to its rotor blades during a rough landing after its final flight on January 18.
The Ingenuity helicopter, endearingly nicknamed Ginny, arrived on Mars in February 2021 after hitching a ride on the agency’s Perseverance rover. Three months later, it became the first aircraft to conduct controlled, powered flight on another planet. Mars’ thin atmosphere presented a challenge for the little rotorcraft, which had to spin its blades up to 10 times faster than helicopters on Earth to stay aloft.
During its 72nd and final sortie, Ingenuity lost contact with Perseverance, which served as its communication relay with Earth, shortly before touchdown. When NASA reestablished contact with the chopper, new imagery revealed that “one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight,” the agency said in a statement.
The $80 million aircraft, which weighs about four pounds on Earth, was designed to perform five flights over the course of 30 days. By the end of its three-year extended mission, the autonomous rotorcraft had logged nearly 129 minutes of flight time and covered 11 miles of ground—more than 14 times farther than NASA originally planned.
“The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to end,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best—make the impossible possible. Through missions like Ingenuity, NASA is paving the way for future flight in our solar system and smarter, safer human exploration to Mars and beyond.”