In 2021, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab successfully launched the first powered flight on another planet with the Ingenuity drone helicopter, co-developed with AeroVironment, Inc. Now, the two are proposing to do it again, with one big change: They want to launch not one, but six new helicopters, and what’s more, they want to launch them as they’re descending from Mars orbit. Why bother with this pesky “ground” you speak of? Much cheaper to lift off when you’re already in the air.
The mission is called Skyfall, which I guess no one told them was also the name of a James Bond movie. The idea is for a capsule to drop down towards the Martian surface, open up before it impacts, and out will fly the six helicopters. Each drone will then fly a different route, using cameras and radar to scan what’s underneath the surface. This will hopefully detect water, ice, or other resources that would make for a good landing site for an eventual manned mission to the red planet.
It’s even possible that this process could “advance the nation’s quest to discover whether Mars was ever habitable.” Could a robot helicopter dropped from space find aliens on another planet? Probably not, but also, please yes.
The importance of Ingenuity
When it first lifted off from Martian soil, Ingenuity only hoped to traverse 980 feet over the span of a few weeks. Instead, the plucky American aviator covered 10.5 miles over three years. It did finally crash in January 2024, during which it suffered rotor damage too severe to ever get it to fly again. While the cause of the crash remains unknown (kind of hard to do an investigation on Mars), Ingenuity soldiers on, dutifully serving as a static weather station now.
I’d say that was a pretty successful mission, all things considered. Clearly NASA agrees, since the Skyfall mission is effectively a major expansion of Ingenuity; the new helicopter drones will be upgraded versions of that design, made by the same public-private partners, JPL and AeroVision respectively.
Exactly how public vs how private may be shifting, however. AeroVision says that it will be taking on some of the work that JPL originally did “commercializing” Mars drones this time around. That sounds in line with the Trump administration’s push to move traditionally government-run operations, like retrieving astronauts, to corporations instead. NASA is also under threat of crippling proposed budget cuts, so it might not even be able to do the work it used to do.
I, for one, think the Martian aliens will welcome their new American corporate overlords. Either way, Skyfall won’t be lifting off of Earth’s soil until at least 2028. If all goes well, air traffic will be getting pretty thick underneath red skies by the end of the decade.
