Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is a small autonomous helicopter presently operating on the planet Mars. It is part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. The helicopter arrived on the Martian surface attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, which landed on February 18, 2021. The helicopter was deployed to the surface on April 3, 2021. Both the rover and the helicopter began their missions on Mars at the Octavia E. Butler Landing site near the western rim of the wide Jezero crater.
On April 19 it made the first powered, controlled extraterrestrial flight by any aircraft. During its first flight Ingenuity took off vertically, hovered, and then landed. It flew for a total of 39.1 seconds during that attempt. As of its 64th flight on October 27, 2023, Ingenuity had flown a total of 1 hour, 57 minutes and 36 seconds over days.
The flights have demonstrated the helicopter's ability to fly in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, just 0.6% as thick as the air on Earth. It proved that flight was possible on other planets without the direct human control that the finite speed of light makes impractical (depending on the positions of the two planets, radio signals take between 5 and 20 minutes to travel between the Earth and Mars). As a result of this delay Ingenuity must autonomously perform the maneuvers planned, scripted and transmitted to it by its operators.
The helicopter was intended to perform a 30-sol technology demonstration, making five flights at altitudes ranging from for up to 90 seconds each. Before Ingenuity's first flight, Perseverance drove approximately away to create a safety buffer between itself and the helicopter. The success of Ingenuity's first flight was confirmed three hours after its completion by JPL, which livestreamed a view of mission control receiving the data. On April 30, 2021, during its fourth flight, Perseverance recorded the sound of Ingenuity during operation, making it the first interplanetary spacecraft whose sound was recorded in situ by another interplanetary spacecraft.
After a brief demonstration phase to prove its airworthiness, JPL commenced a series of flights designed to show how aerial scouting could aid the exploration of Mars and other worlds. In this operational role Ingenuity now scouts areas of interest for the Perseverance rover.
The helicopter's performance and resilience in the harsh Martian environment have greatly exceeded expectations. The aircraft surpassed its required altitude and flight duration specifications soon after beginning operations on Mars. This allowed Ingenuity to perform far more flights than were initially expected of the aircraft. It flew during the remainder of 2021 and into 2022. In March 2022 NASA announced that it would extend Ingenuity's mission and continue to fly the aircraft through at least September of that year. As of it continues to perform successful flights, providing scientific data and site scouting to Perseverance.
Ingenuity was designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with AeroVironment, NASA's Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center. Contributors of key components included Lockheed Martin Space, Qualcomm, and SolAero.
Development
Concept
The development of the project that would eventually become Ingenuity started in 2012 when JPL director Charles Elachi toured and met with members of the Autonomous Systems Division at JPL. The idea for the project drew on prior concept work in the division. By January 2015, NASA agreed to fund the development of a full-size model, which came to be known as the "risk reduction" vehicle. NASA's JPL and AeroVironment published the conceptual design in 2014 for a scout helicopter to accompany a rover. By mid-2016, $15 million was being requested to continue development of the helicopter. By December 2017, engineering models of the vehicle had been tested in a simulated martian atmosphere and models were undergoing testing in the Arctic, but its inclusion in the mission had not yet been approved or funded.
Mission integration
At the time of the approval of the Mars 2020 program in July 2014, a helicopter flight demonstration was neither scoped nor budgeted.
The United States federal budget, announced in March 2018, provided $23 million for the helicopter for one year, and it was announced on May 11, 2018, that the helicopter could be developed and tested in time to be included in the Mars 2020 mission. The helicopter underwent extensive flight-dynamics and environment testing, and was mounted on the underside of the Perseverance rover in August 2019. NASA spent about $80 million to build Ingenuity and about $5 million to operate the helicopter.