NASA has completed the first-ever aircraft accident investigation on another planet, examining the crash of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 72nd and final flight on January 18, 2024. The investigation, conducted by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and AeroVironment, reveals that a navigation system failure in featureless Martian terrain led to the helicopter’s hard landing and subsequent damage. This investigation was conducted from a distance of over 100 million miles from Earth. “When running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don’t have any black boxes or eyewitnesses,” said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s first pilot at … Continue reading NASA Investigates Ingenuity’s Final Crash After 72 Flights, 17 km Traveled, and 2 Hours in the Martian Sky