How

The initial flight was a resounding success, as were the four that took place in the following fortnight. After those flights, the small craft was scheduled to end its mission as the rover drove away – but instead it continued to fly. By early December, it had made 17 ever more ambitious jaunts and scouted for Perseverance in the first part of the rover’s mission to explore Mars’ zero crater.

Adore pantos at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the leader of the Ingenuity team, told New Scientist about the mission’s extraordinary success.

It was exhilarating, in one word. It’s one of those moments in your life when you realize: “Wow, I can’t believe this is really happening 'and' I’m lucky enough to be in this room right now with these people.” Nothing will ever top that moment when we announced the flight was successful.

I have to say, seeing the shadow of the craft as it took off for the first time was pretty breathtaking, even for someone not involved in the mission.

The shadows have kind of this mirror reflection effect. It makes it more real when you see your shadow, like when you see your reflection in the mirror. When you see the blades and the legs and the shadow is projected on the Martian surface, it really brings it home.

Ingenuity is a technology demonstration. We don’t have a science payload. Our mission was to prove that we can fly – that’s it. We knocked out our first five flights 'and' we were lucky that the helicopter was still functioning, and we were starting to see a glimmer of the functionality that we could have for a continuing mission.

We were no longer just a technology demonstrator. Then our mission became to continue pushing the limits and learn how to interact with this helicopter on a longer scale, and also to scout for Perseverance. That’s been really rewarding, working with the rover team to figure out what would be the best areas to scout out. That’s something I could have never imagined doing a year ago, when all we cared about was doing our first flight.

We have a road map for that 'and' it’s called the Sojourner rover. It was a tech demo [that landed on Mars in 1997], this little rover the size of a microwave, and now we have Perseverance, which is the size of a car with all of these instruments on it. That’s how I view Ingenuity.

We proved that we can fly, and now we have this ground truth to help us design the future of rotorcraft. My dream is to see fleets of spacecraft in the sky on Mars, potentially helping 'out' future human explorers, but also performing their own science.