NASA lost contact with its small Ingenuity helicopter on Mars during its 72nd flight, the space agency said, adding that it was looking for a way to re-establish contact, AFP reported.

A helicopter that resembles a large drone has become the first mechanical device to fly to another planet in 2021. It arrived on Mars using the Perseverance rover, which acts as a data relay between the helicopter and Earth.

Ingenuity did reach an altitude of 12 meters during its flight on Thursday, NASA explained in a statement released late Friday.

But “during its descent, communication between the helicopter and the rover stopped earlier, even before landing,” NASA wrote.

The teams responsible for the helicopter are “analyzing the available data and considering the next steps to restore communication,” the US space agency added.

The flight was planned to “check the helicopter’s systems after landing earlier than planned during the previous flight,” it added.

On X (formerly Twitter), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which operates the spacecraft, also announced that the Perseverance rover cannot currently see Ingenuity, but that its teams “may consider approaching for a visual inspection.”

NASA has briefly lost contact with the helicopter in the past, most notably for an extended period of about two months last year, but this outage was planned for that time.

Ingenuity, which weighs only 1.8 kg, was originally planned to launch just five times, but the mission exceeded all expectations.

In total, the helicopter covered about 17 kilometers and flew at an altitude of 24 meters.

Its longevity is impressive, especially when you consider that it has to survive the freezing Martian nights, keeping warm with solar panels that charge its batteries during the day.

Thus, he became a companion of the Perseverance rover, whose mission is to search for traces of ancient life on Mars.

Ingenuity, successful mission

The Ingenuity experiment cost $85 million, which is about 3% of the total cost of the Perseverance mission ($2.7 billion). Seven years ago, those who came up with this helicopter worked hard to convince NASA management that the small helicopter deserved a place in the “belly” of the rover, full of super scientific equipment. Now it is clear that it was worth it, if only because in the spring of 2021, Ingenuity was talked about and written more than about the rest of the experiments combined.

NASA has proven it can add an “aerial dimension” to the explorations successfully carried out by various rovers over the past 24 years on Mars. Initially, Ingenuity was conceived as a simple experiment without scientific equipment on board, but after successful flights, the small aircraft assisted the rover in its work and thus gained an important role in the mission.

The main mission is to find traces of fossil life on Mars, and Ingenuity is helping by flying over sites of scientific interest that are inaccessible to the rover. It takes aerial photos to help Perseverance pick the easiest route through the rocky terrain of Lake Crater, for example, so Ingenuity is a sort of “scout” that takes aerial reconnaissance flights.