Teddy Zanetos, Ingenuity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told reporters Thursday that the broken blade appeared to have hit the surface of Mars during landing, severing “the last 25 percent of the length” of the appendage. .
“We lost a large portion of our thrust capacity,” he explained, adding, “we will never know” whether the rotor strike or communications loss occurred first.
“Eventually … we will lose contact,” Zanetos said, though it was unclear whether that would happen within days or months. According to Zanetos, lessons learned from Ingenuity will inform future flights to Mars.
He said, “None of us should be surprised in the future, when the first astronauts, the first women and men will be on the surface (of Mars), and we will have fleets of planes flying around.”
Ingenuity’s legacy is set to live on in Dragonfly, a car-sized, nuclear-powered rotorcraft NASA plans to send to the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan in 2028.
