Washington:

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has transmitted its final messages to Earth and will now serve as a permanent data collection device on the Red Planet’s surface, NASA said on Tuesday.

The tissue box-sized aircraft hitched a ride on the belly of the Perseverance rover, making history by achieving its first powered flight on another planet. The Perseverance rover lifted off for the first time on April 19, 2021.

“A long goodbye,” NASA said on social media site X.

“The Ingenuity team has received the final information from the #MarsHelicopter, which will now serve as a stationary test bed, collecting data that may benefit future explorers of the Red Planet.”

The original purpose was just to prove that flying in the ultra-thin Martian atmosphere was possible through five test runs, but Ingenuity exceeded all expectations.

It deployed a total of 72 times, logging more than two hours of flight time on short flights, overcoming sandstorms, treacherous terrain, failing sensors and freezing conditions.

Its mission evolved into serving as an aerial scout, assisting its wheeled companions in searching for signs of ancient microbial life from billions of years ago, when Mars was wetter and warmer than it is today.

Its solar heating system is designed to operate in the spring but cannot run continuously all night in the winter. This caused the flight computers to freeze and forced engineers to devise new protocols.

NASA said on Monday it was trying to bring Martian rocks collected by the Perseverance rover back to Earth faster and cheaper, as the agency faces growing criticism for running seriously over budget.

China is making progress on a simpler “grab-and-go” sample return mission to the Red Planet “around 2030,” state media reported, which would make it the first country to achieve the feat.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)