After three years of soaring through the ultra-thin skies of Mars, NASA’s autonomous Ingenuity helicopter has finally been grounded for good.
While power still flows through the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) helicopter, recent images revealed that at least one of its rotor blades sustained irreparable damage after its last flight — Ingenuity’s 72nd flight over the Red Planet — rendering it unable to fly again, NASA announced in a statement on Thursday (Jan. 25).
“The historic journey of Ingenuity, the first aircraft on another planet, has come to end,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in the statement. “That remarkable helicopter flew higher and farther than we ever imagined.”
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