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NASA believes it understands why Ingenuity crashed on Mars

Engineers are already beginning to plan for possible follow-on missions.

"While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with," said Ingenuity ’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news release. The navigation system uses these visual cues to help determine the vehicle's velocity and ensure that it returns to the surface with almost no lateral or vertical motion, to make a soft touchdown. The remarkable success of Ingenuity has prompted NASA engineers to already begin planning for possible follow-on missions, including a larger " Mars Chopper" that could carry scientific instruments to study areas inaccessible to rovers.

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