Nasa's helicopter mission over after suffering damage on Mars

Nasa has announced that its Ingenuity helicopter which has been operational on Mars won’t fly again after suffering damage.

The groundbreaking technology had been the first robot vehicle to fly on a different planet to our own, but the space agency has now stated that its mission is over.

Despite the fact that Nasa had only planned for the Ingenuity to fly for 30 days, it had been operating for nearly three years.

Rotor blade damage means that it won’t be able to fly again, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson posted a video on social media discussing the helicopter’s remarkable run.

An artist's impression of the Ingenuity roverCreative Commons

“It is bittersweet that I must announce that Ingenuity, the ‘little helicopter that could’ - and it kept saying, ‘I think I can, I think I can’ - well, it has now taken its last flight on Mars,”

It flew an awful lot in that time – far exceeding the expectations of the engineers who built it.

In fact, it flew 14 times farther than originally planned and covered a distance of 10.5 miles (17 km) through all 72 flights.

Things began for the Ingenuity when it landed strapped underneath NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet three years ago.

To fly on Mars at all is an incredible technological achievement, especially given that taking off the surface of the planet is much harder than on Earth, given that it’s especially hard to gain aerodynamic lift as the atmosphere is only 1 per cent as dense.

It made its last journey on January 18, where it performed a short, vertical flight before beginning its descent and losing contact with the team. A few days later, images showed the shadow of its rotor blades, showing one had broken.

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