Ingenuity, the Stakhanovite Martian drone, breaks his pipe: ciao artist! – Liberation

2024-02-03 11:10:55
Mars, in the footsteps of the robots fileArrived on the red planet in February 2021, in the luggage of the Perseverance rover, this miniaturized helicopter has carried out more than 70 flights, beyond initial expectations. Until breaking a blade in January.

We ended up believing him to be indestructible. Ingenuity, the small helicopter that NASA sent to Mars to see if we might take off on another planet, has continued to surprise its world by carrying out flights without showing the slightest sign of fatigue. It was initially planned to make it do four or five tours in the Martian atmosphere, just enough to validate the concept. Ingenuity ultimately made 72 in the space of three years, before breaking its pipe… well, its rotor.

The story of the Martian drone began in February 2021, when it arrived on the Red Planet in the luggage of the Perseverance rover. The bulk of the American “Mars 2020” mission rested on the shoulders of this car-sized rover to explore the Jezero crater, which once hosted a Martian lake, to understand if it might have been conducive to the development of forms of life. But it is restrictive to move by rolling on another planet: the surface is steep, often steep, studded with sharp rocks… Perseverance’s predecessor, the Curiosity rover, had the painful experience of this in tearing its wheels. Perseverance therefore drives slowly – it peaks at 4.2 centimeters per second, or 152 meters per hour. And in parallel with its snail’s pace adventure, the American space agency wanted to test the idea of ​​a small flying machine, capable of quickly and simply exploring a Martian region to do reconnaissance and pave the way for the big one. rover.

Miniaturization of components

At 50 centimeters high and 1.2 meters wide at the blades, Ingenuity is light enough (1.8 kilos) to fly on Mars. This is much more difficult than on Earth, because the atmosphere of the Red Planet is very thin – its atmospheric pressure is 160 times lower than that of Earth. There is therefore much less lift. However, Ingenuity has provided striking proof that we can fly on Mars while being as light as possible, thanks to the miniaturization of components. Its first takeoff was a quick jump, just long enough to climb to 3 meters of altitude and rest. Then engineers on Earth made it make longer and longer flights, over tens then hundreds of meters for several minutes at a time. Ingenuity thus supported Perseverance throughout son road trip martienthe following or preceding one, and recharging its batteries between each flight using its own solar panels.

In April 2023, Ingenuity celebrated its 50th flight. “He shattered all the indicators of success,” rejoiced Theodore Tzanetos, head of the Ingenuity team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The biggest constraint was not being able to move far away from the rover, especially in the canyons, to stay within communication range. The helicopter has made 22 more flights since this anniversary, continuing to break records: on December 20, for example, it traveled its longest distance, 705 meters, for its 69th flight. Its altitude record is 20 meters, reached in September for the 59th flight.

Things got worse at the start of this year 2024. On January 18, during its 72nd flight, “data sent to Perseverance by Ingenuity show that it reached the maximum altitude of 12 meters that it had been assigned “, wrote the mission team on its blog. Then “during its descent, communication between the helicopter and the rover ended abruptly, before landing.” Communication has been restored the day following, but the relief was short-lived. In trying to understand the causes of this signal break, the engineers looked at the latest images taken by the drone and discovered, in one of the photos of the ground surrounding it, the shadow of Ingenuity. The tip of its blade seems to be shredded. “One or more of the blades suffered damage during landing, and Ingenuity is no longer capable of flying,” NASA concluded this week. The investigation continues to understand the extent of the damage and its cause, but one thing is certain: “His mission is complete.”

NASA boss Bill Nelson paid tribute to the inexhaustible Martian drone in a press release from the space agency: “The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to an end. This remarkable helicopter flew higher and further than anyone ever imagined, and helped NASA do what we do best: make the impossible possible. Through missions like that of Ingenuity, NASA is paving the way for future missions in the solar system and for smarter, safer exploration for astronauts, on Mars and beyond.”

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