After losing contact with its helicopter, NASA put the entire Mars mission on hold

One of the great spaceflight feats of the last decade was the achievement of powered flight on another world. The Mars Ingenuity helicopter has made 27 flights since its first hop in April of 2021. It has exceeded expectations and hopes of its scientists and engineers.

Dust is accumulating on the solar panels of a small helicopter. The dust reduces the ability of the vehicle to charge its batteries. The northern hemisphere of Mars is approaching the dead of winter, which comes in a little more than two months, just as the helicopter needs all of the solar energy it can get.

The helicopter's flight controllers lost contact with the helicopter on May 3 due to battery issues. They had been keeping a close eye on the health of their tiny craft. The engineers thought that the Ingenuity's flight computer entered into shutdown mode due to a lack of power after losing contact. Most of the helicopter's on-board electronics were turned off to protect them from the cold nighttime temperatures. The internal clock was included.

The engineers on Earth took an extraordinary step to save the helicopter. Ingenuity was a small component of the larger Perseverance rover, which uses a bridge to communicate back to Earth. The engineers thought that when the Sun rose and Ingenuity's batteries started to charge, it would try to communicate with the nearby rover. When Ingenuity tried to call Perseverance, the rover wouldn't be listening.

Perseverance was told to stop all of its science activities for a full day so that it could listen to Ingenuity. The significance is that the helicopter was initially viewed as a technology demonstration. The added risk of Ingenuity was not something the leadership team wanted. The helicopter was supposed to make five flights in 30 days. The entire Mars mission was being put on hold in order to save the small vehicle.

Ingenuity called home after about 24 hours. According to NASA, the link was stable and the solar array was able to charge its batteries to 41 percent. The engineers say they hope to resume Ingenuity's flight campaign within the next few days after bringing the helicopter's batteries to a full charge.

This may be the beginning of the end for a helicopter that has exceeded all expectations. The NASA engineers had to take some drastic steps to preserve the battery charge. They have now ordered the helicopter's heaters to come on only when the battery's temperature falls to -40 degrees, far colder than the previous point of 5 degrees. It is not known how many of the off-the-shelf components on the vehicle will fare without this additional heating.

Mars is going to get darker and colder as winter deepens.