NASA has lost contact with the Ingenuity Mars helicopter

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NASA's trailblazing Mars rotorcraft Ingenuity experienced a worrying communications blackout during its latest aerial foray that temporarily halted the iconic mission in its tracks. But after two days of radio silence, engineers managed to reconnect with the autonomous drone to gather more data on what transpired.

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On January 18th, Ingenuity embarked on its ambitious 72nd voyage across the Jezero Crater landscape – an awe-inspiring feat for technology designed to demonstrate short test flights. After ascending 12 meters without incident, mission controllers lost the signal midway through planned descent sequences prior to landing.

With the Perseverance rover out of line-of-sight range at the time, diagnosing root causes proved uniquely difficult. But NASA commended the helicopter's robust systems for maintaining stability without ground oversight to touch down intact on Mars surface.

By January 20th, rover operators suspended scientific workloads to dedicate efforts toward locking onto any faint communications from Ingenuity across long distances. Their dogged efforts finally succeeded in restoring the uplink that evening.

While the cause behind the alarming outage remains under deeper investigation, NASA indicated all signs show Ingenuity survived the independent landing while preserving core function. Extensive telemetry data paves the way for researchers to plot recovery steps and hopefully resume ambitious flight plans that have shattered expectations.

Having far outlasted goals to log five experimental hops back in 2021, the resilient drone has now surveyed 17.7 kilometers in over 128 minutes aloft. It frequently scouts terrain ahead of Perseverance and assists scientific targeting while providing invaluable visual context of the alien landscape.

But despite Ingenuity's proven aerial durability, lead Mars Helicopter MiMi Aung reminded that complexity always invites uncertainty even on technology's best days. She lauded her team’s quick reactions and Perseverance’s adaptive efforts that again saved the mission from potential calamity.

Above all, scientists emphasize each anomaly presents opportunities to harden systems should aerial exploration play an increasing role in future interplanetary travels. Applying lessons from Ingenuity's expansive flight log aims to pave smoother skies for the next generation of Mars drones and perhaps even crewed vehicles across other worlds someday.

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