It seems strange to me that there aren't any other scuffs in the regolith made by the rotors when they supposedly hit the ground.
Here is a theory:
• The blades disintegrated in mid-air.
• The scuffs we see were not made by the rotors but by the helicopter's feet; it dropped fast, bounced, and then landed at its final location.
• The disintegrated blades spread to pieces so they are not seen around the incident, except for one which flew south, almost intact.
Crude animation:
Also, there is this item here, which has a strangely gray color to be a stone. It could be a piece of debris from the rotor
#Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter #Mars2020 #NASA #Solarocks #space
We need another SUPERCAM image of #Ingenuity, but after the upper rotor is moved to west or south, so that the location of that item marked in the animation can be assessed without possibly being obstructed by the half blade.
It may appear as if it is attached to the end of the blade, but that could be an illusion caused by the different perspective between the SUPERCAM and MCZ cameras, the former being 15cm higher than the latter.
That object there, in tosol's image, casts a short shadow, so it must be on the ground, not attached to the rotor as has been hypothesized before. It's either a strangely colored stone or a piece of #Ingenuity's broken blade
EDIT: Not necessarily. See thread
Animation
Fresh, processed, cropped SUPERCAM_RMI
looking NW (319°) from RMC 50.1618
Sol 1075, LMST: 10:24:45
Original: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/pub/ods/surface/sol/01075/ids/edr/browse/scam/LRF_1075_0762365327_180EBY_N0501618SCAM01075_0010I9J01.png
Credit: #NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/65dBnoise
@65dBnoise I'm not so sure, it looks to me like it is the upper carbon fiber layer that got separated from the foam core of the rotor blade and is now folded up.
That means it could cast a shadow on the lower layer or the foam core.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/Simeon Schmauß
@stim3on
Interesting. It appears that the remaining half of the blade does cast a peculiar shadow, not as I would have expected it, but nonetheless something that could be an edge-on sun delamination.
Undistorted HELI_NAV animation
Image captured from RMC 72.0001/232
Sol 1069, LMST: 10:18:46
Original: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/pub/ods/surface/sol/01069/ids/edr/browse/heli/HNM_1069_0761832297_421ECM_N0720001HELI00232_0000LUJ01.png
Credit: #NASA/JPL-Caltech/65dBnoise
#Flight72 #Ingenuity #MarsHelicopterCrash #NASA #Mars2020 #Solarocks #Space
@stargazersmith
It wouldn't be serious to claim anything without knowing hard facts and putting them in a coherent sequence. Ingenuity's team has said very little, but even then some of it seems not verifiable, and they have far more data than anybody else does. I'm sure they have several theories, they just are not public.
So, I'm examining some hypotheses about what is that we see and what has happened at various stages, which can actually be falsified. Deteriorated blades is one of them.
65dBnoise
Simeon Schmauß
Stargeezer Smith