Ingenuity Prepares for First Flight on Mars

The Perseverance program, launched in 2020, builds on previous missions that sought evidence of “habitable conditions in ancient times,” according to the NASA site, by searching for direct signs of microbial life. Ingenuity is part of a complementary mission to test technologies that future campaigns will require—eventually to include human flight on the nearby planet. The previous craft to land on Mars prior to Perseverance was InSight, on November 26, 2018.