{"id":201303,"date":"2024-12-11T20:08:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T02:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/ingenuitys-last-hop-lessons-from-mars-first-aircraft"},"modified":"2024-12-11T20:08:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T02:08:16","slug":"ingenuitys-last-hop-lessons-from-mars-first-aircraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/ingenuitys-last-hop-lessons-from-mars-first-aircraft","title":{"rendered":"Ingenuity\u2019s Last Hop: Lessons from Mars\u2019 First Aircraft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ingenuitys-last-hop-lessons-from-mars-first-aircraft2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What can <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/mars-2020-perseverance\/ingenuity-mars-helicopter\/\">NASA\u2019s Ingenuity helicopter<\/a> on Mars teach us about flying on other planets? This is what engineers at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently investigated ever since the robotic pioneer performed its last flight on the Red Planet\u2019s surface on January 18, 2024. The purpose of the investigation was to ascertain the likely causes for Ingenuity\u2019s final flight, as the team found damage to the helicopter\u2019s rotor blades in images sent back to Earth. This investigation holds the potential to help scientists and engineers improve upon Ingenuity\u2019s design for future flying robots on other worlds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don\u2019t have any black boxes or eyewitnesses,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/news\/nasa-performs-first-aircraft-accident-investigation-on-another-world\/\">said Dr. H\u00e5vard Grip<\/a>, who is a research technologist at NASA JPL and Ingenuity\u2019s first pilot. \u201cWhile multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The reason for Ingenuity\u2019s \u201cretirement\u201d was due to damage to its rotor blades it sustained during Flight 72, which turned out to be its final flight, due to navigation system failures in identifying a safe landing spot. As a result, engineers hypothesized that Ingenuity experienced a hard landing due to insufficient navigation data, breaking the rotor blades due to higher-than-expected loads. The findings from this investigation will help engineers implement better designs for NASA\u2019s upcoming <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/mars-sample-return\/\">Mars Sample Return mission<\/a>, which is currently in the design phase with an anticipated launch date of 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What can NASA\u2019s Ingenuity helicopter on Mars teach us about flying on other planets? This is what engineers at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently investigated ever since the robotic pioneer performed its last flight on the Red Planet\u2019s surface on January 18, 2024. The purpose of the investigation was to ascertain the likely causes for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}