The first plane crash investigation on another planet

Ingenuity, NASA's Mars research helicopter, crashed on January 18, 2024 due to a problem with its guidance system.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, which first took off on Mars on April 19, 2021, was the first flying vehicle to operate on another planet. It was truly a miracle, and each flight exceeded the design team's expectations. But on January 18, 2024, on its 72nd flight, the small helicopter crashed and lost its rotor blades, ending the mission.

Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and AeroVironment are completing a detailed review of what happened that day, making it the first investigation into a plane crash on another planet . The investigation concluded that the accident stemmed from a problem with the guidance system. The system likely failed to provide accurate data, leading to a chain of events that ended Ingenuity's operations, IFL Science reported on December 11.

The Ingenuity helicopter (right) nears the top of a sand ridge in this image taken by the Perseverance rover on Feb. 24, 2024. Part of the rotor blade is located about 15 meters (50 feet) west of the helicopter (left). (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS)

On its final flight, the helicopter climbed 12 meters, hovering in place and taking pictures of the sandy ground below. At 19 seconds into the flight, Ingenuity began its descent. Thirteen seconds later, it was on the ground, but its rotor blades were damaged. The relatively bare ground may have played a role. Without an object to track, the guidance system didn't know exactly where the helicopter was, leading to a violent dive.

'When you investigate an accident from over 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) away, you don't have any black boxes or witnesses. While there are many possible scenarios with the current data, there is one that we believe is the most likely: The lack of surface texture means the guidance system has too little information to function ,' said Ingenuity's first pilot, JPL engineer Håvard Grip.

Despite being unable to move, Ingenuity continued to send weekly updates on weather and avionics, which are crucial for designing future vehicles. Ingenuity was originally intended to make just five flights over 30 days. It was designed from cheap, off-the-shelf materials and was intended simply to demonstrate that such an approach was feasible. It ended up operating for nearly three years, making 72 flights, flying 30 times farther than planned, and also faster and higher.

"Because Ingenuity was designed to be low-cost while requiring massive computing power, we became the first mission team to send a commercial mobile phone processor into deep space. We are approaching the four-year mark of continuous operations. This shows that not everything needs to be bigger, heavier, and radiation-resistant to operate in the harsh Martian environment," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity project manager.

The new findings were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting. At the meeting, Tzanetos also shared details about Ingenuity's potential successor: the Mars Chopper helicopter , which could carry several kilograms of scientific equipment and travel up to 3 kilometers a day.