Ingenuity flies off on Mars with mystery piece of debris; NASA says helicopter is safe

The Ingenuity helicopter successfully completed its 33rd flight on Mars but this time it flew with an unexpected object. In the footage gathered by Ingenuity’s Navigation Camera, a piece of debris was seen slowly fluttering while being stuck to one of the helicopter’s four legs as it ascended from the surface. The foreign object debris (FOD), as NASA calls it, which separated from the helicopter's leg a few seconds later, was not visible in the footage captured during Ingenuity’s 32nd flight.

"All telemetry from the flight and a post-flight search and transfer are nominal and show no indication of vehicle damage," an official statement by NASA read. "The Ingenuity and Perseverance Mars 2020 teams are working to discern the source of the debris." During its 33rd flight, the rotorcraft reached an altitude of 10 meters (33 feet) and travelled 111.24 meters (365 feet) in 55.2 seconds.

Ingenuity was sent to Mars with the Perseverance rover, which landed on the planet last February, as a technology demonstration of carrying out flights in a thin atmosphere. Meant for just five flights, the rotorcraft has been air-borne 33 times and it also earned its team the Robert J. Collier Trophy for pioneering powered and controlled flights on another planet. Notably, the harsh environment on Mars has started taking a toll on Ingenuity as it has already lost one of its navigation sensors. So far, the helicopter has been used as a guide which scouts the Jezero crater (Perseverance's landing site) before the rover goes on exploring the area. 

Currently, both the rover and the helicopter are facing low temperatures due to the winter season on Mars. Perseverance, however, is continuing to collect rock samples at the 'Enchanted Lake' which is said to have the highest chances of harbouring signs of past microbial life. NASA has plans to fetch the samples by 2033 under the Mars Sample Return Program which it is developing with the European Space Agency (ESA). Recently, Tanja Bosak, a biologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed that scientists would look for traces of molecules responsible for forming cells once the rocks arrive on Earth.

Image: NASA