Almost three years ago, the Ingenuity helicopter became the first man-made object to successfully fly on a planet other than Earth. It landed on the surface of Mars with the Perseverance rover to explore the surface of the red planet before the human mission began. NASA announced this week that Ingenuity will no longer be able to fly on Mars after a propeller malfunction.
Since 2021 it has performed 72 flight missions which is beyond the original target of only 5 flights. The last time he flew was on January 18 before the relationship with him was cut off. Photographs sent back by Perseverance show the Ingenuity's propeller blades damaged during an emergency landing.
In total, Ingenuity successfully flew for 2 hours in the Martian atmosphere and collected dozens of images that will help the next mission. An impressive feat for a small helicopter that uses only a Snapdragon 801 processor is almost 11 years old. The Perseverance mission not only managed to fly the first human object outside of the Earth's atmosphere, it also managed to generate oxygen using the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) machine.