Tag: Ingenuity
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Space science in 2024: Moon missions, Martian milestones, astrophysics discoveries, and more
2024 was another busy year for space science, with many new missions, successes, and discoveries across the solar system and beyond. Three new missions were launched to the Moon, while one mission was canceled, and Curiosity and Perseverance continued to explore and make discoveries in their respective regions on Mars. Beyond the Earth-Moon system and…
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NASA believes it understands why Ingenuity crashed on Mars
Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars. In short, the helicopter’s on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features…
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Perseverance faces challenges climbing to crater rim as sample tube supply dwindles
In August, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover began its fifth science campaign — the rover’s most ambitious yet. The campaign has seen Perseverance climb the western rim of Jezero Crater and face its steepest and most challenging terrain yet, all the while continuing to take surface samples and look for signs of ancient microbial life. Currently, Perseverance…
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Final images of Ingenuity reveal an entire blade broke off the helicopter
It has now been several weeks since NASA’s tenacious helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, made its final flight above the red planet. This happened last month. On January 6, Ingenuity flew 40 feet (12 meters) skyward but then made an unplanned early landing after just 35 seconds. Twelve days later, operators intended to troubleshoot the vehicle…
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Before Ingenuity ever landed on Mars, scientists almost managed to kill it
MiMi Aung could barely contain her excitement as she drove up Oak Grove Drive, the leafy thoroughfare leading to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Aung had spent her formative years in Burma and Malaysia, two countries without a space program. A career in aerospace seemed beyond her reach. Yet here she was, at 22 years old,…
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It turns out NASA’s Mars helicopter was much more revolutionary than we knew
Much has been written about the plucky exploits of NASA’s small Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. And all of the accolades are deserved. “The little mission that could” did, flying 72 sorties across the red planet and pushing out the frontier of exploration into the unknown. Yet as impressive as Ingenuity‘s exploits were over the last…
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Ingenuity’s mission ends after 72 flights
NASA announced its Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, had ended its mission after experiencing an anomaly during its 72nd flight on Jan. 18. Images recovered after the flight showed severe damage to at least one of the aircraft’s rotor blades, making further flights impossible. The damage spelled the end for the small helicopter that made history in…
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1,000 sols into their mission, Perseverance and Ingenuity continue to investigate Jezero Crater
After celebrating their 1,000th sol, or Martian day, on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter are continuing to explore Jezero Crater on the Red Planet. Recently, the robotic pair completed their extensive investigation of the ancient river delta within Jezero, which contains evidence of flowing water that may have once filled Jezero thousands of…
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The helicopter on Mars just flew again after surviving an emergency landing
By the standard of some of its previous flights, the most recent voyage of NASA’s intrepid Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was nothing special. Over a period of 24 seconds, the small helicopter rose to an altitude 5 meters above the red planet’s dusty surface and then touched back down in the same spot. During some…
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Perseverance finds Mars river could have been ‘wilder,’ Mars Express takes new volcano images
May has been a big month for scientific discoveries on Mars, as NASA’s Perseverance rover has continued to find more convincing evidence of what could have once been a “deeper and faster-moving” river than data initially suggested. New images taken by the rover’s main camera show two mosaics of course sediment grains and tall, curving…