The recent images taken by MRO show the solar panels have acquired the same reddish-brown hue as the rest of the planet. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California used the photos to estimate the amount of dust that had accumulated, which will help prepare for future missions.

The otherworldly helicopter, with its 36 blades, is the size of an SUV—a major upgrade from Ingenuity's four blades.

Instead of a winter wonderland, the Red Planet's northern hemisphere goes through an active—even explosive—spring thaw. While New Year's Eve is around the corner here on Earth, Mars scientists are ahead of the game: The Red Planet completed a trip around the sun on Nov.

The space agency is looking to maintain human presence in the microgravity environment as it transitions to commercial stations.

"She still has one final gift for us, which is that she's now going to continue on as a weather station of sorts."

"When running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don't have any black boxes!" NASA's Håvard Grip said.

NASA has released a new document that highlights planned programmatic paradigm shifts in Mars exploration over the next 20 years.

NASA has shown off an early rendering of an enormous Mars Chopper concept, a follow-up to the space agency's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

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The investigation suggests that a failure in Ingenuity's navigation system led to a hard landing, causing the mission to end.

After over 70 flights, the Ingenuity helicopter — the first craft to ever make a powered, controlled flight on another planet — crashed in the Martian dunes in January 2024. But its unexpected achievement (engineers hoped it might make five flights) has prompted the conceptual design and planning for what the agency calls its "Mars Chopper."

The Ingenuity autonomous helicopter surpassed all expectations to fly dozens of missions over several years on the Red Planet, only stopping this year when an accident damaged one of its rotors