News Excerpt:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) regained contact with its Mars helicopter Ingenuity after it could not communicate with it towards the end of its 72nd flight on the red planet.

About the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity:

• In July 2020, NASA launched a spacecraft towards Mars, carrying the Perseverance rover with Ingenuity attached to its belly. 
• In February 2021, Perseverance successfully landed on the red planet. 
• When the rover reached a suitable “airfield” location, it released Ingenuity to the surface.
• This mini rotorcraft weighs just four pounds (1.8 kilograms), and is about 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) tall.
• It became the first motorized craft to fly autonomously on another planet.
• Data from the helicopter is transmitted via Perseverance back to Earth.

Objective of the mission:

• The rover’s mission was to study signs of ancient life and collect samples that might be sent back to Earth during future missions.
• Ingenuity was sent to Mars as an experiment to test powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time.

Why was Ingenuity’s flight on Mars a big deal?

• This was a big deal for two reasons. 
• Firstly, Ingenuity was the first aircraft to fly on another planet. 
• Secondly, it managed to fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which isn’t conducive for flying.
• Flight at Mars is challenging because the Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1% of the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. 
• This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight.

How did Ingenuity’s mission evolve?

• After its first flight, Ingenuity made four more flights of increasing time, speed and velocity. 
• Scientists began to use Ingenuity for scouting -
• When Perseverance set off to explore the rocks to the south, Ingenuity went along, scouting the terrain ahead of the rover. 
• That helped avoid wasting time driving to unexceptional rocks that had looked potentially interesting in images taken from orbit.
• Before it went missing, Ingenuity had made 72 flights, staying aloft for more than 128 minutes and covering a total of 17.7 kilometres, according to the mission’s flight log.