NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter won't fly on Mars anymore... The helicopter itself captured this color image showing the shadow of a rotor blade damaged during a rough landing.
So one of the main exploration devices of the mission is broken, 225 million km away from Earth. There is of course no way to repair it. Is that an engineering failure, in multi-billion dollar scientific expedition?
Not at all.
- The device was expected to be a technical demonstration and do 5 flights. It did 72.
➡️ NASA over-engineered the helicopter so it ended up lasting way longer than the mission specs. Carrying on the tradition from Voyager and other probes, NASA JPL engineers did not go for the bare minimum.
- The incident was disclosed openly on Jan 25th, after the damage was confirmed on Jan 19 after a test flight on the 18th.
➡️ NASA is not hiding the issue. NASA is proud of the work achieved and is busy working on the root cause analysis, sharing as much as they know. Even the failure itself is actually a great science result.
- This actually proved the helicopter to be a standard method for exploring Mars.
➡️ May be the case only on Mars (and Titan) but that's already a great confirmation of a badass concept. The science return we're going to get from it will be truly amazing.
NASA's engineering teams truly represent what we should love about technology ❤️
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