NASA engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are investigating the final flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which ended in failure on January 18, 2024. The investigation concludes that navigation system errors likely caused the helicopter to crash, resulting in severe damage to its rotor blades.
The Ingenuity helicopter was designed as a technology demonstration for up to five experimental test flights over 30 days. It successfully completed 72 flights and flew more than 30 times farther than planned, accumulating over two hours of flight time. However, on its final flight, the navigation system struggled to track visual features on the surface, leading to high horizontal velocities at touchdown.
The failure is attributed to the helicopter’s vision navigation system being designed for well-textured terrain, but encountering steep, relatively featureless sand ripples in the Jezero Crater. The rapid attitude change resulted in loads on the rotor blades beyond their design limits, snapping all four of them off.
Despite the mission’s failure, Ingenuity still provides valuable data to the Perseverance rover, including weather and avionics test information. This data is helping engineers develop future designs for Mars aircraft and vehicles, with one concept, Mars Chopper, aiming to fly several pounds of science equipment and explore remote locations autonomously.
NASA officials say that Ingenuity has given them confidence and data to envision the future of flight at Mars, inspiring research into smaller, lighter avionics and rotorcraft designs.
Source: https://generalaviationnews.com/2024/12/23/nasa-investigating-first-aircraft-accident-on-another-world