Skip to main content

NASA says goodbye to Mars helicopter Ingenuity after an incredible 72 flights

It’s a sad day for space fans, as the plucky little helicopter Ingenuity has finally come to the end of its mission on Mars. The helicopter will not be making anymore flights due to damage to one of its rotors that occurred during a recent landing, NASA said in an announcement on Thursday, January 25.

The mission was originally planned to make just five flights and to last 30 days, but has been successful beyond what anyone had imagined. The helicopter has made a total of 72 flights over the course of its three-year mission, which began when it was set down on the surface of Mars by the Perseverance rover. The rover arrived on Mars with the helicopter tucked up underneath its belly in February 2021, and Ingenuity sat on the surface for the first time in April 2021. It then made history by becoming the first rotorcraft to fly on another planet with its maiden flight.

First Video of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in Flight, Includes Takeoff and Landing (High-Res)

Throughout its three-year mission, the public has delighted in seeing video footage of the helicopter, including some that the helicopter took of its downward-facing view of the surface and other footage that Perseverance took of the helicopter in action.

Recommended Videos

The helicopter flew largely autonomously, as the communication delay between Earth and Mars of up to 20 minutes meant that direct control was impossible. Instead, engineers would plan out flights that the helicopter would then execute, navigating itself by using its downward-facing cameras to track its movements. It was this system that struggled recently, as the helicopter had problems navigating over a particularly featureless patch of terrain during its 71st flight earlier this month.

After its 72nd flight on Jan. 18, 2024, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this color image showing the shadow of one of its rotor blades, which was damaged during touchdown.
After its 72nd flight on January 18, 2024, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this color image showing the shadow of one of its rotor blades, which was damaged during touchdown. NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA lost contact with the helicopter following issues encountered when it tried to perform a brief hop for its 72nd flight, but it managed to regain communications by using the Perseverance rover to listen for its signal. However, images captured after this flight show the source of the problem: damage to one or more of its rotor blades, which was presumably sustained during the landing of either Flight 71 or Flight 72.

The helicopter remains upright on the surface of the planet and in communication with Earth, but the damage to the rotor blade means that it can no longer fly. In an emotional video, NASA team members paid tribute to Ingenuity and its successes:

#ThanksIngenuity – NASA’s Mars Helicopter Team Says Goodbye

The success of the mission was also hailed by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to end,” Nelson said. “That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined and helped NASA do what we do best – make the impossible, possible. Through missions like Ingenuity, NASA is paving the way for future flight in our solar system and smarter, safer human exploration to Mars and beyond.”

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Mars has ‘oceans’ worth’ of water – but it’s deep underground
More than 3 billion years ago, Mars was warm, wet, and had an atmosphere that could have supported life. This artist's rendering shows what the planet may have looked like with global oceans based on today's topography.

One of the key issues for getting humans to Mars is finding a way to get them water. Scientists know that millions of years ago, Mars was covered in oceans, but the planet lost its water over time and now has virtually no liquid water on its surface. Now, though, researchers have identified what they believe could be oceans' worth of water on Mars. There's just one snag: it's deep underground.

The research used data from NASA's now-retired InSight lander, which used a seismometer and other instruments to investigate the planet's interior. They found evidence of what appears to be a large underground reservoir of water, enough to cover the entire planet in about a mile of ocean. But it's inaccessible, being located between 7 to 13 miles beneath the planet's surface. The water is located in between cracks in a portion of the interior called the mid-crust, which sits beneath the dry upper crust that is drillable from the surface.

Read more
NASA says goodbye to our planetary protector, the asteroid-spotting NEOWISE mission
This artist’s concept depicts the NEOWISE spacecraft in orbit around Earth. Launched in 2009 to survey the entire sky in infrared, the spacecraft took on a more specialized role in 2014 when it was reactivated to study near-Earth asteroids and comets.

Fifteen years after a launch that was intended to begin just a seven month mission, NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft has finally shut down. The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft surveyed the sky spotting thousands of asteroids within our solar system, and made discoveries such as a striking comet that as named after it. The spacecraft has made years of scientific observations, but with its orbit slowly dropping, it has now been decommissioned and will burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere later this year.

NEOWISE was a remarkable mission for several reasons, one of which was that it was never intended to be an asteroid observation mission at all. It was originally launched as WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, and looked at distant objects like galaxies in the infrared. Its original mission was successful and so was extended, but within a couple of years the spacecraft had used up the coolant required for some of its detectors and it was put into hibernation.

Read more
Perseverance rover finds tantalizing hints of possible ancient life on Mars
mars 2020 perseverance rover

NASA's Perseverance rover was sent to Mars with one big, ambitious aim: to see if life could ever have thrived on our neighboring planet. Although there's unlikely to be anything alive on Mars now, the planet was once similar to Earth, with a thicker atmosphere and plentiful water on its surface. And during this time, billions of years ago, microbial life could have survived there. Now, Perseverance has located some tantalizing indications of possible microbial life -- although it's too early for scientists to be sure.

The rover has been taking samples by drilling into the martian rock as it travels, and it's a recent sample from an area called the Cheyava Falls that has ignited interest. The rock, collected on July 21, has indications of chemical signatures and physical structures that could potentially have been formed by life, such as the presence of organic compounds. These carbon-based molecules are the building blocks of life; however, they can also be formed by other processes.

Read more