NASA Loses Contact With Ingenuity Mars Helicopter During Its 72nd Flight

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA Loses Contact With Ingenuity Mars Helicopter During Its 72nd Flight

NASA has lost contact with Ingenuity Mars again. The U.S. space agency announced that the dropout occurred Thursday during the helicopter's 72nd flight.

NASA Lost Contact With Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

When Ingenuity's handlers were nearing the end of its 72nd trip on Mars on Jan. 18, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) helicopter went missing.

"Ingenuity's handlers lost contact with the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper on Thursday (Jan. 18), toward the end of its 72nd flight on Mars," NASA announced in a statement Friday (Jan. 19).

"During its planned descent, communications between the helicopter and rover terminated early, prior to touchdown. The Ingenuity team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish communications with the helicopter."

Ingenuity and Perseverance landed together on the bottom of the 45-kilometer (28-mile)--wide Jezero Crater, which once held a large lake and a river delta in February 2021.

Perseverance's mission was to search for signs of extinct life on Mars and gather samples for eventual return to Earth. On the other hand, Ingenuity is acting as a scout for the car-sized rover on an extended mission approved by NASA after the small helicopter completed its initial five-flight technological demonstration campaign in the spring of 2021.

NASA plans to use Perseverance to look for Ingenuity. Per ASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages both robots' missions in a post on X, formerly Twitter, they considered driving Perseverance closer to where Ingenuity was last seen as they were out of sight to conduct a visual inspection.

Based on the mission's flight log, during its 72nd flight to Mars, Ingenuity stayed in the air for almost 128 minutes and traveled 11 miles (17.7 kilometers). It's uncertain if those figures will rise further. We'll have to wait and see if the people in charge of Ingenuity can get in contact with the trailblazing helicopter- the first-ever vehicle to investigate the sky of a planet other than Earth.

The #MarsHelicopter executed Flight 72 on Jan. 18, but on its descent, communication between Ingenuity and @NASAPersevere terminated prior to touchdown. The team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish comms. https://t.co/Mq6b0iYMHX
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) January 20, 2024

ALSO READ: NASA Perseverance Rover Loses Its Martian Pet Rock After Over a Year of Companionship

History of NASA Losing Contact With Ingenuity

It's not the first time NASA lost contact with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Last year, they also experienced the same for a week, and it was the first time they had a total blackout communication with the helicopter.

The team ran into a similar issue on Flight 50 when they could not hear the helicopter for an extended period. On Sol 755, they lost contact with the chopper, but since Ingenuity had already demonstrated its ability to survive by periodically entering and exiting nocturnal survival mode, they weren't concerned.

The team became worried when the rover appeared on its journey to Foel Drygarn, and the helicopter vanished from view. They searched for it, and things got worse when, for the first time, they encountered a complete radio blackout during the helicopter's operation in almost 700 sols. According to Travis Brown, Chief Engineer of Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, even in the worst communication conditions, they continue to receive some indications of activity from the helicopter, so they were very concerned after not picking up any signals from Ingenuity for six sols.

After nearly a week, they saw a lone radio ACK (acknowledgment). This happened at precisely 9:44 LMST (local mean solar time) when the helicopter was expected to wake up. On Sol 762, the team received a second radio acknowledgment indicating that the helicopter was still operating.