What is it?

A blinky little badge celebrating the successful first flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter - the first powered, controlled flight on another world! The front features artwork by Sofie Shen - a gold stylized silhouette of Ingenuity set against a red Martian sky. A red LED on the antenna, powered by an ATtiny85V MCU, blinks a helicopter-esque spin-up and spin-down pattern before settling to a slow, low-power blinking. It's powered by a CR2032 coin cell battery (included).

Note: this is a first-revision badge & contains a small mistake which does not affect its operation - see errata below.

What makes it special?

• It has a nice shiny gold (ENIG) finish
• When you turn it on, the LED starts blinking faster and faster until reaching 2500 blinks per minute, simulating the 2500 rpm speed of Ingenuity's helicopter rotors - faster than any helicopter on Earth!
• After that (~20 seconds), it slows down to approximately 1 blink every two seconds - a low power mode which will continue to blink for months, if not years! This pays homage to Ingenuity's ability to conserve power and achieve mighty things with its small solar panels and batteries.

What are my options?

You can get it with either a magnet on the back, or a (butterfly clutch) pin. It's small enough (5cm x 5cm) to wear comfortably on a shirt or bag. This badge was hand-assembled with a soldering iron by yours truly. A kit will also be available eventually.

Errata

The first revision of this badge contains a small mistake - the wrong footprint was used for the ATtiny85V, necessitating a "bodge" to make it fit. Specifically, one of the pins is soldered to a trace and three others are left unconnected. The badge still works as intended, and I don't foresee any issues - a dab of glue has been added to ensure it stays put. However, if your badge stops working due to this bodge, I'd be happy to replace it for you at no cost. Details can be found on this Twitter thread

NOTE: This product is "fan art" and is not officially licensed by or affiliated with NASA/JPL or California Institute of Technology, creators of the Mars rovers.