NASA’s Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, has completed its final flight, but its companion, the Perseverance rover, has not bid farewell just yet.
Originally released earlier this month by NASA, the grainy raw images of Ingenuity resting in the sand ripples of Mars’ Neretva Vallis river valley have been cleaned up and posted by German design student Simeon Schmauss on X-formerly-Twitter and Flickr.
The enhanced images, as explained by Schmauss, were generated by combining six raw images, zooming in on Ingenuity, and adjusting the colors “to approximately match what the human eye would see.”
Ingenuity came to rest on a pretty steep slope. It's possible she may have tipped over, so the blades contacted the ground during landing. pic.twitter.com/XPr6lh1UjC
— Simeon Schmauß (@stim3on) February 5, 2024
Fondly Remembered
Last month, NASA announced that the four-pound flyer, the first-ever craft to fly on another world, had sustained irreparable damage to its rotor blades during its 72nd and final flight on the Red Planet. Speculation from the designer suggests that Ingenuity might have encountered difficulties on the steep slope of its landing site, resulting in significant damage to its blades.
During a livestreamed tribute from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Ingenuity team lead Teddy Tzanetos mentioned plans for a final test to see if they could get its failing wings to “wiggle” a bit. There’s no update on whether this attempt was successful.
Initially, Ingenuity was only expected to conduct five flights to demonstrate the feasibility of flight on another planet. However, as it continued to serve as a scout for Perseverance, affection for the helicopter grew among NASA and Futurism communities, making its demise even more poignant.
“We couldn’t be prouder or happier with how our little baby has performed,” Tzanetos said during the January 31 livestream. “It’s been the mission of a lifetime for all of us.”
