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Ingenuity’s final resting site on Mars

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity's damaged propeller
Click for orignal image.

The photo to the right was downloaded from Ingenuity today, and looks downward at the ground below the helicopter, showing the shadow of one of its propellers, with the damage at its tip indicated by the arrow.

It is this damage that forced NASA management to retire the helicopter yesterday. With the tip of one of Ingenuity’s two propellers damaged, the helicopter simply can no longer fly reliably, or at all.

The green dot on the map above shows Ingenuity’s final resting spot. The blue dot shows Perseverance’s present position. Perseverance will surely at some point approach Ingenuity closely to get better pictures of the damage to help engineers better figure out what happened and why. For example, did the propellor simply break during flight? And if so, why?

I freely admit that my optimistic speculations last week were wrong, that Ingenuity was merely having communications issues with Perseverance. I also suspect the Ingenuity engineers were hoping the same thing, and were far more disappointed than I to discover otherwise.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • Ronaldus Magnus

    Imagine a future billionaire who wants to fly his own helicopter on Mars. He or she constructs the helicopter cabin with several Moxie systems (and some emergency 02 tanks).

    Mars does not have the Van Allen Radiation Belts that protect us from the Sun’s radiation here on Earth. The first humans will probably live underground. There are significant lava tubes that could be used at first. The helicopter would need to fly at night, but how cool would that be?

  • Gary

    I can’t figure out if that is a dog or a razorback on the bottom left of the second image.

  • V-Man

    At least the heli wasn’t destroyed and we can go pick it up in a few years for the first Mars museum. :)

  • pzatchok

    I wonder if they have a copy on Earth and could test to see if the balance is really that bad.

  • Jeff

    Mars Guy’s weekly update with details of Ingenuity’s last few flights.
    https://youtu.be/btxm0NhaNT0

  • pzatchok

    It looks like all the blade tips were damaged by ground impact.

    I would program several tests to see if it could possibly still fly. The blades could still be close to balanced enough.

  • pawn

    I would think that ground impact would damage the leading edge more than is apparent in the shadow. Fatigue from fluttering could also be the culprit. That area is seeing the highest forces.

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