The little helicoptertouched down with the Perseverance rover in 2021 . On January 25 , NASA announced that the vaporize fomite had to perform an emergency landing place which damaged one of its rotor andended its mission .
This reminds us that space geographic expedition is still difficult to do . But inventiveness ’s three age on Mars testify that powered , control flight of stairs on Mars was potential .
The minuscule helicopter live on for far longer than had been planned and flew higher and further than many had envisaged . Beyond this Martian experimentation , the rotorcraft ’s success pave the elbow room for other mission using fly vehicle to search planets and Sun Myung Moon .
Artist’s depiction of Mars Aerial and Ground Global Intelligent Explorer (MAGGIE), which NASA is currently considering for a future mission.Image: Ge-Cheng Zha
The first landing on the Moon were electrostatic . The year 1969 was believably the most authoritative one for outer space geographic expedition , whenApollo 11andApollo 12brought astronauts to the lunar surface , but 1970 was the yr for planetary geographic expedition .
In 1970 , we had thefirst soft landing on another major planet , Venus . The first automatonlike sample delivered to Earth from the Moon . And the first robot scouter to drive around another body ( also the Moon ) .
Since then , following over 50 age of wandering exploration and engineering development , there have only been a small phone number of successful surface missions , and even few were able to move . Venus was visit by a 12 motionless landers between 1970 and 1985 , and never again .
A view of Ingenuity on Mars.Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
From rovers to helicopters
Mars was only successfully set down on three prison term between 1971 and 1976 before thePathfinder landerand Sojourner rover make it in 1997 . The European Huygens space vehicle then landed on Titan , the moon of Saturn , in 2005 .
These attack at reaching the airfoil are rare , passing unmanageable , and , historically , the landers were just ever mobile . Yet the NASAMars rovers Spirit , Opportunity , Curiosity , andPerseverancehave all transcend their designs and travelled further and further .
And ingeniousness flew .
An aerial view of Mars captured by Ingenuity on 1 March 2025. Taken from a height of 279 feet (85 meters), the helicopter managed to spot the Perseverance rover below (very top left of image).Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
It was n’t the first ballistic capsule to fly . Those would be the balloon deployed by theSoviet Vega 1 and 2 missions , which floated over Venus in 1985 . But inventiveness had control , cameras , and connectivity . It took photos of its wanderer and of Mars from an entirely new perspective . It require the world ’s attention and captured our hearts .
In Moscow , I had the probability to see models and reproduction of the Vega balloon and the first lunar rover . They made a secure impression on me than the Mars wanderer Twin being used at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL ) in California . The Soviet missions were more venturous and unlike , and they were from generations ago , before my time and long before my career as a erratic scientist .
Ingenuity was audacious , original and completely fresh . The photos it took , of Perseverance , finding technology discarded from the descent faculty that acquit it down to Mars and of the Martian vistas from a razz ’s optic view , were breathtaking . Meanwhile , Perseverance also took video of cleverness flying in the melodic line . Nothing like it had ever seen before .
Future flights
Ingenuity had a rough ride get there , however . The intact Mars 2020 mission ( of Perseverance , ingeniousness and their transport systems ) was sudden .
And cleverness was n’t included onboard at first . As an idea , it was proposed late in the development phase angle of Mars 2020 , and face serious opposition . It add together extra complexity , cost , risk and unexampled failure modes . It was also driven by an engineering object , with the possibleness of a lilliputian outreach – the opportunity to communicate the mission ’s skill and technology to the world – on the side .
ingeniousness was n’t intended to last for very long . It was plan to prove chopper trajectory in the slender Mars atmosphere . It place five myopic escape over a calendar month . Possible outcomes included toilsome landings , toppling over , lose power if its solar panel were covered in dust , or losing communication when it was far from the rover ( this happened several time ) .
But it hold up direction beyond expectations , live three years on the Martian airfoil , even through a dusty time of year , and cause 72 flights . Much of its achiever was aided by the communication web that now exists at Mars .
cleverness receives instruction and transmits data to Perseverance , which communicates with a fleet of satellites that include the European ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter , NASA ’s Maven spacecraft , and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter . These , in turn , intercommunicate with two mysterious space mesh on Earth , scheme of radio aerial around the world that command and track space vehicle .
It took 50 eld of planetary exploration to get here , but already we can see the impact on next exploration that Ingenuity ’s mission is having . The next interplanetary rotorcraft will be theDragonfly mission to Saturn ’s moon Titan .
It will be a very different from ingeniousness . It will weigh about a gross ton and take flight with eight rotors . It is a huge fomite design to wing in Titan ’s thick atmosphere .
One of the next Red Planet mission will be Mars Sample Return , target to collect sample container of Martian soil being prepared and hive up by Perseverance . This has been planned to be carried out with purpose of a roamer , but the success of Ingenuity has head to the idea – and now the evolution – ofa helicopterto do that .
The futurity that Ingenuity has open up for us is exciting . We ’ll see eggbeater on Mars and Venus , more balloon on Venus , swimming vehicles under the icy moon of Jupiter and Saturn , and maybe even an aeroplane or two .
Kevin Olsen , UKSA Mars Science Fellow , Department of Physics , University of Oxford . This clause is republish fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license . register theoriginal article .
DragonflyIngenuityMarsPlanetary Earth’s surface
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