Why has a landscape almost without details trapped this Martian helicopter?

Ingenuity was to make some demonstration flights to Mars. He made seventy-two before his last, on January 18, 2024. After this landing, his damaged blades put an end to his aerial career. The investigation must reconstruct an accident from a distance where no one can inspect the wreckage.

The analysis presented by NASA favors a navigation difficulty. The ground-facing camera followed details of the terrain to estimate movement. However, the helicopter flew over wrinkles of sand that were poor in visual cues. The system no longer had enough reliable elements to properly track its movement.

Excessive horizontal speed would have contributed to abrupt contact on a slope, and then to the stresses that broke the blades. This sequence is presented as the most likely scenario, not as a scene filmed in its entirety. The paradox remains: for this machine, a visually too uniform floor could be more difficult to read than a field strewn with small pebbles.