Christian Elliott

Ingenuity took its 72nd and final flight in 2024, after which a rotor blade was damaged while landing.

That was a sad day for the team, but Ingenuity worked so well that now when scientists and engineers think of exploring Mars, they think of helicopters.

Havard imagines a future where astronauts on Mars use helicopters like Ingenuity.

Yeah, that project hadn't even been announced when we talked with Hovard.

But these next generation helicopters will carry more scientific equipment and they'll scout ahead for landing sites and map water ice below the surface.

Now, for her part, Katie admits she has a pretty rover-centric view.

She sees Mars all day, every day, through Perseverance's eyes or cameras.

So when Ingenuity flew and she got the first images of the rover from the sky,

Well, the discovery started the moment Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater, and they really haven't stopped.

The first thing was a type of rock that scientists hadn't studied much on Mars before, igneous rocks.

These are formed by molten lava or magma crystallizing.

It's pretty easy to tell how old igneous rocks are, which is why scientists are excited about them.

Now the Curiosity rover is exploring Gale Crater, which is mostly sedimentary rock.

NASA sent Perseverance to Jezero Crater, more than 2,300 miles away.

It's about as far as New York is from Las Vegas.

But they were still sort of expecting to see a lot of the same rocks.

That's because the rocks looked a lot different.

Perseverance ground up those rocks and studied them and confirmed that they were igneous.

And it also found signs that they'd interacted with water sometime in the past, long after they crystallized.

Then Perseverance moved on from that area and found sedimentary rocks.