NASA begins funding hardware for 'Skyfall' Mars helicopter mission

NASA is funding initial hardware development for 'Skyfall', a proposed follow-up to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Ingenuity was a small, solar-powered drone that hitched a ride with the Perseverance rover and flew 72 times on Mars — far exceeding its planned 5-flight demo, before a rotor blade damaged in 2024 ended its mission. Skyfall, being led by the same team at JPL, is a much larger, hexacopter-style design with six rotors, roughly the size of a small car. Its main goal would be to autonomously traverse dozens of kilometers of Martian terrain, collecting rock and soil samples left behind by Perseverance and ferrying them to a waiting lander that would launch them back to Earth — a crucial link in the Mars Sample Return architecture. MSR itself has been in turmoil: a 2023 independent review found the original plan was too expensive and slow, leading to layoffs at JPL and a scramble for cheaper alternatives. Skyfall is not yet formally selected; this funding lets engineers start building early hardware to prove the concept works, with a final mission decision likely a few years away.