Early Monday, a tiny helicopter flew on Mars . It was a short hop, just up and down, for Ingenuity, which hitched a ride to space inside the Perseverance rover
in February. And it was an extraordinary feat: the first-ever powered flight on another planet.
Over the next 31 days, Ginny the chopper will make a handful of test flights in the thin Mars air under the watchful gaze of Percy, which will relay images and data back to NASA.
The flight is one of several astonishing successes so far, in a Martian-year-long mission dedicated to a centuries-old mystery: Did ancient microbial life flourish somewhere besides Earth?