NASA“毅力号”火星直升机团队说再见-暂时性的

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter team has bid farewell to the historic mission, as the rotorcraft prepares for a new role on the Red Planet. The team gathered for a final downlink shift to reflect on the highly successful mission and to monitor a transmission from the helicopter. Despite being initially designed for a short-lived technology demonstration, Ingenuity exceeded expectations by operating for almost three years, flying more than 14 times farther than expected, and logging over two hours of flight time.

After experiencing a hard landing on its last flight, Ingenuity will now serve as a stationary testbed, collecting long-term data that could benefit future explorers of Mars. The helicopter will continue to wake up daily, test its systems, take pictures of the surface, and collect temperature data. This long-term data collection is expected to provide valuable insights into Martian weather patterns and dust movement.

In the event of future technical failures, the team has calculated that Ingenuity's memory could potentially hold about 20 years' worth of daily data. The mission controllers also received a farewell message from Ingenuity featuring the names of people who worked on the mission.

The Ingenuity team is now looking ahead to how future Mars helicopters, including the Mars Science Helicopter concept, could contribute to the exploration of Mars and beyond.