NASA‘s history-making Ingenuity Mars helicopter has signed off after its three-year mission on the Martian planet after crash landing on the surface during a flight.
The tiny copter took flight on January 18 but endured an accident that damaged one of its blades, permanently grounding it.
Ingenuity was originally designed to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days when it first landed in 2023.
But the helicopter surpassed expectations with 72 flights and flew more than 14 times farther than planned while logging more than two hours of total flight time.
Data showed he helicopter achieved a maximum altitude of 40 feet and hovered for 4.5 seconds before starting its descent at a velocity of 3.3 feet per second on its last fatal flight.
This is a developing story… more updates to come.
NASA’s history-making Ingenuity Mars helicopter has signed off after becoming the first manmade craft to fly on another planet – in what the agency called its ‘Wright brothers moment
The tiny copter took flight on January 18 but endured damage that broke one of its blades, which ended its three-year mission on the Martian world. Pictured is the last image humans will see from the copter
