Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and AeroVironment conducted the first-ever investigation into an aircraft accident on another planet. The subject of the investigation was the crash of the Ingenuity drone.
Ingenuity’s final flight
The Ingenuity helicopter was designed as a demonstrator to prove the feasibility of flying in the Martian atmosphere. It was designed to conduct five flights within 30 days. In reality, the drone operated for almost three years. During this time, it flew about 17 km.
Ingenuity’s last 72nd flight took place on January 18, 2024. It was planned as a short vertical jump to evaluate the drone’s flight characteristics and survey the terrain. According to telemetry, the vehicle climbed to a height of 12 meters, hovered and took pictures. At the 19th second, descent was started, and by the 32nd second, the helicopter landed on the surface and became silent. Communication with it was restored the next day. After a few more days, engineers received pictures taken of the Ingenuity that showed it had severely damaged main rotor blades.
How to investigate an aircraft accident on Mars
For obvious reasons, investigating the aircraft crash on another planet was a daunting task. NASA engineers had no eyewitnesses or black boxes. Nevertheless, they managed to determine the most likely scenario of what happened. Probably, the drone’s navigation system was to blame.
The Ingenuity navigation system was designed to track visual surface features. A downward pointing camera designed for use on well textured (pebbly) flat terrain was used. This was more than enough to accomplish the first five planned missions of Ingenuity. But by the 72nd flight, the helicopter was in a section of Jezero Crater filled with steep, relatively formless sand ripples.
One of the main requirements of the navigation system was to provide a speed estimate that would allow the helicopter to land within a small range of vertical and horizontal speeds. Data transmitted during the 72nd flight showed that about 20 seconds after takeoff, the navigation system was unable to find enough surface features to track.
A navigational fault resulted in too high horizontal velocity on landing. A hard impact against a sand ripple slope caused Ingenuity to roll and pitch. The abrupt change in position caused the load on the rapidly rotating rotor blades to exceed their design limits, and all four blades broke off at their weakest point, about a third of the distance from the tip. The damaged blades caused excessive vibration in the rotor system, causing one of the blades to break off completely and created an excessive demand for power, which in turn led to a loss of communication.
Ingenuity’s legacy
Despite this flight being its last, Ingenuity still continues to operate as an autonomous weather station, collecting weather data and transmitting it to the Perseverance rover once a week. The drone will continue to collect data even after the rover is out of radio contact with it. It is expected that it could operate for up to 20 years. NASA hopes that in the future, some other mission will pick up Ingenuity and retrieve the meteorological data it has collected from its memory.
The success of Ingenuity has also inspired the creators of other missions. NASA will launch the Dragonfly octocopter to Titan in 2028. The development of a promising Mars Chopper rotorcraft is also underway. It will be about 20 times heavier than Ingenuity, can transport several kilograms of scientific equipment and autonomously explore remote Martian locations, traveling up to 3 kilometers in a day.
Provided by JPL
