Nasa’s Mars helicopter loses contact for two DAYS after being battered by vicious dust and plummeting temperatures

PANICKED Nasa scientists have gasped a sigh of relief after their multimillion dollar helicopter on Mars fell mysteriously silent for two days.

Experts feared the worst as the $80million Ingenuity chopper felt the wrath of vicious dust and extremely cold conditions on the Red Planet.

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The dinky robot stopped communicating back to Earth on May 3.

But the space agency has revealed that contact was re-established on May 5.

Space nerds believe it was hit by a seasonal increase in the amount of dust in the Martian atmosphere, as well as plummeting temperatures in the lead up to winter.

The dust prevents the tech from catching sunlight that keeps it powered up.

It caused Ingenuity to enter a low-power mode, which resulted in its clocks going out of sync with the Perseverance rover on the ground.

This meant when the helicopter thought it was time to send data to the rover, the base station wasn’t listening.

But Nasa warns that it isn’t “out of the woods” yet.

Experts say the continued pesky dust will wreak even more havoc on Ingenuity.

“We have always known that Martian winter and dust storm season would present new challenges for Ingenuity, specifically colder sols (solar day on Mars), an increase in atmospheric dust, and more frequent dust storms,” Ingenuity Team Lead Teddy Tzanetos warned.

“Every flight and every mile of distance flown beyond our original 30-sol mission has pushed the spacecraft to its limits each and every sol on Mars.

“Our top priority is to maintain communications with Ingenuity in the next few sols, but even then, we know that there will be significant challenges ahead.

“I could not be prouder of our team’s performance over the last year, let alone our aircraft’s incredible achievements on Mars.

“We are hopeful that we can accumulate battery charge in order to return to nominal operations and continue our mission into the weeks ahead.”

Ingenuity and Perseverance have spent well over a year on the Red Planet now, having arrived together in February 2021.

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