Perseverance rover spots Ingenuity helicopter's snapped-off rotor blade on Mars.

[LazyHippo]

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on the sands of Mars, with its blade visible in the inset image. (Image credit: Ingenuity: NASA/JPL-Caltech/edited by Steve Spaleta. Blade: NASA/JPL-Caltech/edited by Josh Dinner. Overlay: Edited by Elizabeth Howell)
 

The blade was broken — and, still unforged, it's been found on Mars.

 

Space fans scouring the raw images from NASA's Perseverance rover recently spotted the broken helicopter blade from Ingenuity lying on the sands of Mars. Ingenuity is permanently grounded as a result of the blade-snapping incident, a hard landing that occurred at the end of its Jan. 18 flight.

 

"Nestled in the vibrant red Martian sand, a lonely blade from NASA's Ingenuity helicopter lies about 15 meters [50 feet] from the aircraft's final resting place," the nonprofit Planetary Society wrote Tuesday (Feb. 27) on X, formerly Twitter.

 

NASA's Perseverance rover captured the broken-off blade of Ingenuity on Mars on Feb. 25, 2024 using its SuperCam imager. This image has been enhanced to make the blade more visible on the sand. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/edited by Josh Dinner)
 

The helicopter, operating in Mars' Jezero Crater, demonstrated flight was not only possible but could be done regularly in the Red Planet's thin atmosphere.

 

After its initial five hops, Ingenuity shifted to a long extended mission in which it was scouting ahead for Perseverance, which is collecting samples for a possible eventual return to Earth (pending funding and technology development for the Mars sample return campaign, whose budget has been under discussion in Congress lately).

 

What finally downed Ingenuity was a sandy patch of terrain that did not have rocks or other navigation aids to help the helicopter to find its way. As Ingenuity came in for landing, the blade snapped as it hit the ground. But the helicopter, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), had already cemented its legacy as a spaceflight pioneer, agency officials said.

 

"The NASA JPL team didn't just demonstrate the technology," Tiffany Morgan, deputy director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said during a Jan. 31 webcast tribute to Ingenuity. "They demonstrated an approach that if we use in the future will really help us to explore other planets and be as awe-inspiring, as amazing, as Ingenuity has been."