Saying goodbye is never easy, especially from a distant world.
The Ingenuity Mars helicopter team met one last time on Tuesday, April 16, to inspect transmissions from the small rotorcraft, the first robot to explore the skies of a non-Earth world.
The meeting, held in a control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, took place nearly three months after Ingenuity’s 72nd and final flight. The 4-pound (1.8 kilogram) helicopter damaged its rotors during landing that day, rendering it an inert asset thereafter; but it still lives on as a weather station and technology testing ground.
“With my apologies to Dylan Thomas, Ingenuity will not go gently into that beautiful Martian night,” Josh Anderson, Ingenuity team leader at JPL, said in a statement.
“It’s almost incredible that after 1,000 Mars days on the surface, 72 flights and a difficult landing, he still has anything to give,” Anderson added. “And thanks to the dedication of this amazing team, Ingenuity has not only surpassed our wildest dreams, but can also teach us new lessons for years to come.”
Relating to: NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity makes its final flight after rotor damage
Ingenuity touched down at the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021 aboard NASA’s life-hunting, sample-collecting Perseverance rover.
Two months later, the small rotorcraft lifted off from Perseverance’s belly and took to the Martian skies for the first time. Ingenuity flew four more times in relatively quick succession, performing a demonstration mission aimed at showing that aerial exploration was possible on the Red Planet despite its thin atmosphere.
And Ingenuity continued to fly on a long mission during which the helicopter performed a reconnaissance mission for Perseverance. According to NASA officials, over the course of 72 Mars flybys, Ingenuity remained aloft for a total of 129 minutes and traveled 10.5 miles (17.0 km); this was a distance 14 times greater than originally expected.
Creativity communicates with Earth through Perseverance, and the large rover will soon disappear over the horizon, leaving its smaller partner behind. The helicopter crew gathered together on Tuesday to eat some “Final Comms” chocolate cake and review the key transmission relayed via Perseverance and NASA’s Deep Space Network, before that happens.
“Telemetry confirmed that a software update previously sent to Ingenuity worked as expected,” NASA officials wrote in the same statement. “The new software includes commands that direct the helicopter to continue collecting data even after communication with the rover is lost.”
NASA officials added that Ingenuity will continue to wake up each day, activate its onboard computers and test its solar panels, batteries and electronics. The helicopter will also photograph the Martian surface and collect temperature data at the final landing site, which the team calls Valinor Hills.
“Ingenuity’s engineers and Mars scientists believe that such long-term data collection will not only benefit designers of future aircraft and other vehicles for the Red Planet, but also provide a long-term insight into Martian weather patterns and dust movement,” NASA officials said. “They believe you can provide perspective,” he wrote.
Ingenuity will continue this work as long as possible; until something breaks or dust covers the solar panels, for example. The mission team believes the helicopter’s memory can hold about 20 years of such data, so Ingenuity could be a valuable resource for Mars explorers years from now.
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“When humanity revisits the Hills of Valinor – whether with a rover, a new aircraft, or future astronauts – Ingenuity will be waiting with the final gift of data, one final testament to the reason we dare powerful things,” said Ingenuity Project Manager Teddy Tzanetos. JPL said in the same statement. “Thank you, Ingenuity, for inspiring a small group of people to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges at the frontiers of space.”
The task team also received a farewell message from Ingenuity during Tuesday’s meeting; They sent this message to Perseverance on Monday, April 15, so that the helicopter could transmit it back. NASA officials said this letter was more emotional than functional and included the names of people who worked on the Ingenuity mission over the years.