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cleverness , the small chopper that ’s been buzzing around the Red Planet for almost three years , has taken its last flight . NASA announced today that at least one of the helicopter ’s carbon paper fibre rotor blades was damaged during its last delegacy , undercoat it for good .
To say that Ingenuity had a remarkable streamlet is a number of an understatement : the helicopter was launched as a engineering demonstration mission , with engineers hoping to achieve up to five flights with the vehicle . As NASA Administrator Bill Nelsonexplained in a statement today , Ingenuity was up against the very , very thin Martian atmosphere , which is less than 1 % as dense as Earth ’s .
There are other challenge , too : Mars is known for epic rubble storm , very moth-eaten temperatures , and the sparse standard atmosphere does little to harbour radiotherapy . But despite all of these challenge , inventiveness ended up perform 72 flights , collectively traveling 11 mile and climbing up to 79 feet at the highest altitude .
The self-reliant chopper take to the skies for the first time on April 19 , 2021 . It arrived on the Red Planet attached to the bottom of the Perseverance wanderer , which is still participating on Mars ’ surface . ingeniousness acted as a sentry for the roamer , checking out web site and collecting decisive photo and video .
“ Like the Wright brothers , cleverness has paved the way for future flight in our solar system , and its leading the style for smarter , safe human missions to Mars and beyond , ” Nelson said .
Nelson said the agency is still inquire the hypothesis that the damaged sword struck the primer . Just last week , NASA experienced a two - day communications brownout with the little helicopter after it conducted what turn out to be its final escape .
