“When running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don’t have any black boxes or eyewitnesses…While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with.”
-Statement by Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of JPL, in a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) publication explaining the final flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on Jan. 18, 2024. The helicopter flew 72 times over the Martian surface, far surpassing NASA’s expectations.
Our Awesome Universe 