Washington: NASA has re-established contact with its tiny helicopter on Mars, the US space agency said Saturday after an unexpected outage prompted fears that the hard-working craft had finally met its end.
Ingenuity’s handlers lost contact with the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper on Thursday (Jan. 18), toward the end of its 72nd flight on Mars.
“Good news today,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, late Saturday.
The agency said that contact had finally been made with the helicopter by commanding Perseverance to “perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.”
“The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72,” it added.
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Good news today: We’ve reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.
The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72. https://t.co/KvCVwhZ5Rk
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) January 21, 2024
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