The mission of the American space agency NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has ended. The first rotorcraft in history to take off in the atmosphere of an alien planet suffered blade damage on its last flight on January 18, 2024. NASA said in a statement published on its official website on January 25 that the device “is no longer capable of flying.”

“The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first spacecraft on another planet, has come to an end. This magnificent helicopter flew higher and farther than we could have imagined and helped NASA make the impossible possible. Missions like Ingenuity help NASA pave the way for future space flights and “It allows Mars and other objects in the Solar System to be better prepared for future human exploration.”— NASA aeronautics agency chief Bill Nelson (Bill Nelson) said in a comment.

The Ingenuity helicopter was delivered to the surface of Mars Crater Lake with NASA’s Perseverance rover in February 2021. The main task of the rotorcraft weighing 1.8 kg was to demonstrate the possibility of using such machines in the conditions of the depleted Martian atmosphere. And he successfully proved this in the first five flights in the spring of the same year. After that, NASA decided to continue the Ingenuity mission and use the helicopter as a rover for the Perseverance rover, which came to the planet to search for signs of ancient Martian life and collect samples of Martian soil. During the extended mission, the helicopter made 67 more flights, significantly exceeding the expectations of the mission’s scientists and engineers.

Although the main part of Ingenuity’s mission was planned to last only 30 days, the helicopter continued to operate on Mars for almost three years. In total, it spent 129 minutes in the Red Planet’s atmosphere as part of 72 flights, traveling a distance of 11 miles (17.7 km) above the surface.

Unfortunately, on its last flight on January 18, Ingenuity encountered problems. Already just before the descent of the device “Communication between Perseverance and helicopter was temporarily interrupted“, NASA said in a statement. The command center on Earth later managed to reconnect with the flying machine, but photographs of the device taken on January 18 showed that one or more of its four wings was missing. damaged during landing “, the aviation agency later reported.

Although the Ingenuity helicopter mission is over, it has certainly written its name into the history books of space exploration and opened the door to potential new research missions using similar rotorcraft in the atmospheres of other planets.