Revealing the dire condition of NASA's life-hunting spacecraft

The real reason behind the "death" of the life-hunting ship Ingenuity has just been revealed in a photo taken by its companion .

Inclined landings are causing trouble for a series of recent spacecraft such as the Japanese lunar spacecraft SLIM or Odysseus, and also seem to "haunt" the life-hunting warrior Ingenuity on Mars.

Ingenuity is a small helicopter probe, landing with the Perseverance rover on Mars in February 2021.

Not only did one chipped propeller, NASA's Ingenuity life-hunting ship lost another propeller - (Photo: NASA).

Ingenuity is Perseverance's "detective" guide, slow, large, and carrying many scientific devices. After ending Ingenuity's unexpected mission at the end of January this year, NASA still did not stop searching for the reason why this "immortal" suddenly stopped working.

Previously, NASA believed that a broken propeller - revealed through a photo in which the craft took its own shadow on the ground - was the cause of its problem. 

It is possible that the ship freely fell at a height of about 1 meter when landing. With the damaged propeller, it can no longer fly.

The photo from January shows the shadow of a chipped propeller - (Photo: NASA).

However, the new photo sent back to Earth by the Perseverance spacecraft after the journey to find a companion shows an even more dire situation, according to Space.com.

In the photo, it is easy to see that Ingenuity has completely lost one of its four propeller blades.

NASA said the most likely scenario is that the area where the helicopter last landed was full of sand and lacking rocks, which would make it difficult for Ingenuity to navigate.

The most likely possibility is that it did not fully recognize the surface when it landed. Some wrong decisions of the little robot caused it to almost fall at an angle to the surface of Mars, the propeller blades completely slashed to the ground, thus breaking one wing, and the other wing was also chipped.

Even though it's sad news, Ingenuity has proven its power beyond expectations, operating for 2 years on Mars, when initially it was only expected to operate well for 30 days.

Perseverance currently operates alone in the Jezero Crater region - once a large lake and fertile river delta - but will still leverage Ingenuity's legacy in its search for life.

Currently on Mars, there is also another NASA lander in operation, Curiosity, which is also a rover-like robot like Perseverance. Curiosity landed in November 2011, the 2-year main mission was "extended" indefinitely by NASA.