On January 20, NASA reestablished communications with the helicopter, but the space agency declared an end to its flying days after an image of the vehicle’s shadow showed that at least one of its blades had sustained minor damage.
During a news conference to discuss the end of the mission, NASA officials said they may never know exactly what happened during Ingenuity’s final two ultimately fatal flights.
But thanks to Perseverance, the rover that brought Ingenuity to the Martian surface and helped relay communications back to Earth, engineers picked up a powerful clue this past weekend.
A German design student, Simeon Schmauß, processed some of these images to form a mosaic showing the helicopter and its surroundings in Neretva Vallis, an ancient channel through which water once flowed.
Additional sleuthing revealed that this blade lay about 15 meters away from Ingenuity on the red Martian sands, apparently winging away from the helicopter prior to or during a landing of the vehicle on its final flight last month.
This additional data will undoubtedly help the engineers and scientists who flew the helicopter to piece together its final moments—and quite possibly make the design of future flying vehicles on Mars and other worlds more robust.
The original article contains 396 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 49%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
On January 20, NASA reestablished communications with the helicopter, but the space agency declared an end to its flying days after an image of the vehicle’s shadow showed that at least one of its blades had sustained minor damage.
During a news conference to discuss the end of the mission, NASA officials said they may never know exactly what happened during Ingenuity’s final two ultimately fatal flights.
But thanks to Perseverance, the rover that brought Ingenuity to the Martian surface and helped relay communications back to Earth, engineers picked up a powerful clue this past weekend.
A German design student, Simeon Schmauß, processed some of these images to form a mosaic showing the helicopter and its surroundings in Neretva Vallis, an ancient channel through which water once flowed.
Additional sleuthing revealed that this blade lay about 15 meters away from Ingenuity on the red Martian sands, apparently winging away from the helicopter prior to or during a landing of the vehicle on its final flight last month.
This additional data will undoubtedly help the engineers and scientists who flew the helicopter to piece together its final moments—and quite possibly make the design of future flying vehicles on Mars and other worlds more robust.
The original article contains 396 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 49%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!