How this helicopter survived 1004 days on Mars, then disappeared...

427 days into what should have been a 30-day Mission and it's turned into a nightmare on the surface of Mars 297 million km away is ingenuity a tiny 680 G helicopter it's made from off-the-shelf Parts you'd find at home it's got bits from an Android smartphone batteries from a cordless drill and to everyone's surprise it's been performing well so far but something is wrong see the Martian winter is coming at night temperatures plummet to a frigid 85° c as Mars gets further away from the Sun the temperature keeps dropping and it kicks up more and more violent dust the Sun is blotted from the sky on her 427th day on Mars they try to reach her just like the day before but they get no response they try again nothing back on Earth the team gathers at the jet propulsion laboratory in Southern California all the signs point to Ingenuity being dead but there is still one thing one final trick they can try to reestablish a connection the first drone that's going to fly on another planet 6 years ago I visited JPL and saw Ingenuity before she left for Mars at the time NASA didn't really believe much in her Mission as Kenneth Farley the project scientist to the Mars 2020 perseverance Mission said I've personally been opposed to it spending 30 days working on a technology demonstration does not further the goals directly from the science point of view in short they thought it was a waste of time most projects to Mars get billions of dollars Ingenuity got only 80 million Which is less than the budget of the movie The Martian but this Scrappy team of scientists were working to prove a crazy concept and against the odds they made it to Mars on February 18th 2021 the perseverance Rover survives entry and lands on the Martian surface attached underneath is ingenuity this marks Saul zero her first day on Mars they sever the umbilical cord and Ingenuity affectionately known as jinny by some on the team prepares herself her mission is simple prove that flight on the red planet is possible but with an atmosphere just 1% that of Earth flying is really difficult she must be ultra light and her blades must spin at over 2,400 rotations per minute to generate enough lift it's a design that no ...