By all accounts, NASA’s Perseverance mission has been a success—especially when it comes to the mission’s Martian helicopter Ingenuity. That’s why plenty of officials were disappointed when the Mars-based craft stopped communicating with mission control in April. Fortunately for those all working on the Perseverance project, Ingenuity has since communicated back with officials after a two-month disruption.
Only expected to make a couple of flights, Ingenuity lost communication with researchers when landing afters its 52nd flight on April 26th. After 63 days, Ingenuity finally communicated that it had successfully landed back on the Martian surface.
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“The portion of Jezero Crater the rover and helicopter are currently exploring has a lot of rugged terrain, which makes communications dropouts more likely,” JPL’s Josh Anderson, the Ingenuity team lead, said in a blog post on the matter. “The team’s goal is to keep Ingenuity ahead of Perseverance, which occasionally involves temporarily pushing beyond communication limits. We’re excited to be back in communications range with Ingenuity and receive confirmation of Flight 52.”
Anderson and the Ingenuity team are already looking forward to the craft’s 53rd flight, which is set to explore an area on the west end of the Jezero Crater with hopes of obtaining further rock samples for the Perseverance rover.
As it stands now, rock samples collected by Perseverance are set to return to Earth at some point in 2031. A pick-up craft is supposed to launch towards Mars in 2026 before picking up the samples and returning back.
“The samples Perseverance has been collecting will provide a key chronology for the formation of Jezero Crater,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said last year. “Each one is carefully considered for its scientific value.”
“Right now, we take what we know about the age of impact craters on the Moon and extrapolate that to Mars,” added Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Bringing back a sample from this heavily cratered surface in Jezero could provide a tie-point to calibrate the Mars crater dating system independently, instead of relying solely on the lunar one.”
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