Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades.
When it launched to Mars more than three years ago, the small Ingenuity helicopter was an experimental mission, a challenge to NASA engineers to see if they could devise and build a vehicle that could make a powered flight on another world.
It was hoped that Ingenuity would make a handful of flights and provide NASA with some valuable testing data.
The fragile little flying machine has been exposed to the harsh Martian atmosphere for more than two and a half years, including bruising radiation, dust storms, and wide swings in temperature from very, very cold to sort of warm.
One week ago, during a simple hover test flight, NASA lost contact with Ingenuity for several hours.
Later, mission operators restored communications by asking the Perseverance rover to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.
The original article contains 455 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades.
When it launched to Mars more than three years ago, the small Ingenuity helicopter was an experimental mission, a challenge to NASA engineers to see if they could devise and build a vehicle that could make a powered flight on another world.
It was hoped that Ingenuity would make a handful of flights and provide NASA with some valuable testing data.
The fragile little flying machine has been exposed to the harsh Martian atmosphere for more than two and a half years, including bruising radiation, dust storms, and wide swings in temperature from very, very cold to sort of warm.
One week ago, during a simple hover test flight, NASA lost contact with Ingenuity for several hours.
Later, mission operators restored communications by asking the Perseverance rover to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.
The original article contains 455 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!