Saying goodbye to the little helicopter that could

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Last week, NASA held its annual Day of Remembrance in memory of all those who lost their lives in pursuit of human space exploration – including the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia. This day is a sobering reminder of the dangers of space flight and the high price we have paid to take humanity to the stars. More details on that below.

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Ingenuity, the small helicopter that has been orbiting the Red Planet for nearly three years, made its final flight last weekend. NASA announced Thursday that at least one of the helicopter’s carbon fiber rotor blades was damaged during its last mission, causing it to shut down permanently.

To say that Ingenuity performed remarkably would be a bit of an understatement: The helicopter was launched as a technology demonstration mission, with engineers hoping to achieve five flights with the vehicle. In the end, the helicopters completed an astonishing 72 flights, collectively traveling 11 miles and climbing to a peak altitude of 79 feet.

Goodbye, simplicity. Thanks for everything.

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is flying on Mars.

launch highlight

This week’s top launch goes to Virgin Galactic, which successfully conducted its eleventh suborbital space flight on Friday. The company’s VSS Unity aircraft took off from Spaceport America in New Mexico carrying four private astronaut customers, whose names were mysteriously not disclosed before the mission. After the mission ended, Virgin announced the names of the customers and revealed that the crew included the first Ukrainian woman in space.

The company’s next mission is expected in the second quarter of this year.

Release, release, release! #VSSUnity has successfully freed itself from our mothership #VMSEve And ignited the rocket motor.#galactic06 pic.twitter.com/C0PrkLjupp

– Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) 26 January 2024

Eric Berger explains what happened after astronaut Taylor Wang encountered problems with his experiment on the ISS; how he became seriously depressed; how he threatened mission controllers in Houston not to “return” to Earth; And how he began to display such an unnatural interest in the space shuttle’s hatch that other astronauts on the ISS with him duct-taped it shut.

“It’s not a particularly pleasant issue to talk about, so NASA, SpaceX, and people flying on vehicles generally don’t do it. But it seems that as access to space continues to expand, the space community should probably be discussing it. With Crew Dragon, SpaceX regularly sends civilians to the International Space Station and on free-flying missions. Most of these people have not had to undergo the rigorous psychological tests that shuttle astronauts are subjected to. Boeing’s Starliner, SpaceX’s Starship and other vehicles will, in the not-too-distant future, only deepen the pool of orbital flyers. Both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic already fly people almost entirely without training on brief suborbital hops.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The whole point of low-cost access to space is that we’ll have more people in space, doing cool things and pushing boundaries. But space is a harsh, incredibly taboo area. It can play with the mind.”

Taylor Wang on the Space Shuttle. Image Credit: NASA

This week in space history

This week, we’re remembering the men and women who lost their lives aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, in addition to other astronauts who died during space flight.

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after takeoff, killing all seven crew members. The disaster resulted in a nearly three-year moratorium on Space Shuttle missions, and the subsequent investigation identified myriad issues within NASA culture that indirectly or directly led to the disaster.

The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Image Credit: NASA