A few days ago Ingenuity, the amazing Mars helicopter, had a mishap. It was at the conclusion of its 72nd flight. Somehow – maybe it leaned over upon landing? – it clipped the tips off of both of its rotors. The little chopper might, in theory, still be able to generate enough lift to fly in the thin Martian air, but the damaged blades would now be out of balance, and at the speed they have to rotate, the vibration caused by the uneven centripetal force would tear the machine to pieces in short order. So that’s going to have to be it.
Still, Ingenuity accomplished a great deal during those 72 sorties, far more than was ever expected of it over its anticipated operational lifespan of only five or maybe six flights. It was supposed to be a mere “technology demonstrator”, that is, a machine built just to see if something was even possible, in this case whether the very thin atmosphere of Mars, which is about the same density as here on Earth at an altitude of 90,000 feet, could support any sort of flying machine at all. It could! This was proved immediately, so the engineers at NASA decided to let the little helicopter stretch its legs a bit, seeing how high and far they could fly it, and whether the concept of using aerial vehicles as scouts for the slow-moving rovers below was as good and practicable an idea as it seemed. It worked like a charm. Ingenuity achieved altitudes of about eighty feet and speeds over 20 MPH, while snapping some amazing high-resolution photos of the terrain ahead of the Perseverance rover, as well as a few shots of the rover itself, as never before seen. Here’s a brief explanation of the program’s achievements from Ingenuity’s chief engineer:
And here’s a shot Ingenuity took of the rover, far off in the distance:
How far we’ve come. I remember marvelling, as a teenager, at the colour photos of the Martian surface transmitted by the Viking lander, a stationary box that for safety’s sake was deposited in one of the most boring pieces of flat terrain they could discern from the orbital surveys. Now here I am, watching a large and extremely sophisticated wheeled vehicle crawling around the hills and gullies of the Red Planet, going to the most scientifically fascinating places (especially those that look like they were once covered by liquid water), conducting all sorts of experiments, collecting samples for later retrieval, and, most incredibly, communicating with its own airborne scout.
A flying machine, placed by human beings on another planet, performing so well that it almost made you wonder why anyone had doubted it could work. Astonishing. Truly. The trail has now been blazed along which bigger, faster, far more capable machines will soon follow, and who knows what wonders they’ll reveal about our neighbouring world, so like our own, as they cruise about investigating mysterious features, and searching for signs of life, past or present.
We may be on the threshold of discoveries that should rock our world.
This is what gets me, though: the world seems unlikely to be rocked, no matter what they discover. From the generally indifferent reaction of the media and public to everything that’s being accomplished by these Mars missions, I’m starting to think that Perseverance could trap and cage a large, rat-like quadruped on the plains of Utopia Planitia, and everybody would be all meh. Big deal.
Mars rat. Meh.
I don’t know, maybe we’ve all watched so much sci-fi that anything short of alien dinosaurs ridden by six-legged knights in titanium armour is about as boring as watching the grass grow.
Or maybe it’s just that we don’t have the bandwidth to pay attention. I know there’s a great deal going on down here on our tortured home world, and if you’re at all familiar with the typical postings on The Needlefish, you know just how terribly aware of it all I’ve always been. There are any number of political, geopolitical, and natural calamities cresting the not-so-distant horizon, at the beginning of a year that may witness events more terrible than anything we’ve seen since the Panzer divisions rolled into Poland (to which you might respond we’re already seeing them). I keep hearing from overwhelmed friends and family that all they want to do is stick their heads in the sand for the duration. Who can pay attention to a science project amid all this racket? Anyway, I suppose that to most folks, the adventures of a few plucky machines wandering around in the dirt a hundred million miles away, even if they knew about them, wouldn’t seem terribly important when set against all the horror and metastasizing chaos that greets anybody paying the least attention to current events.
That makes me sad.
Take a bow, Ingenuity. Sorry your flying days are over, but what a wonderful run you had, and what a thrill it was to grasp what you were up to. There remain those who believe that no civilization could be completely beyond hope if, in the midst of the usual daily strife, it could still muster the scientific, technological, and financial resources to have sent you on your peaceful mission of pure discovery.
the needlefish 