The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program, as well as research in aeronautics and space. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NASA operates ten field centers across the US and is organized into three mission directorates: Human Spaceflight, Research and Technology, and Scien The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) serves as the primary ground station solution for NASA's interplanetary spacecraft and select Earth-orbiting missions. The system employs ground station complexes near Barstow, California, in Spain near Madrid, and in Australia near Canberra. The placement of these ground stations approximately 120 degrees apart around the planet provides the ability for communications to spacecraft throughout the Solar System even as the Earth rotates about its axis on a daily basis. The system is controlled at a 24x7 operations center at JPL in Pasadena, California, which manages recurring communications linkages with up to 40 spacecraft. The system is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The ISA and NASA cooperate with each other on scientific endeavours frequently. Multiple ISA experiments in space were done via the Shuttle program, including the Israeli Space Agency Investigation About Hornets also known as the Hornet Experiment in 1992 and the MEIDEX Freestar Experiment in 2003. Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, was aboard the STS-107 mission on Space Shuttle Columbia. Israel signed the Artemis Accords on January 26 2022. The 2012 landing of Curiosity revealed that the radiation levels on Mars were comparable to those on the International Space Station (ISS)—increasing the plausibility of future human exploration—and detected key chemical ingredients necessary for life. In 2013, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission observed the Martian upper atmosphere and space environment, while the 2018 Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander studied the Martian interior. The 2021 landing of the Perseverance rover included the deployment of the first extraplanetary aircraft, a robotic helicopter named Ingenuity. Launched primarily in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Great Observatories program comprises some of NASA's most powerful astrophysical tools. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 via Discovery on STS-31 and proved capable of viewing galaxies 15 billion light-years away. Although a major manufacturing defect in the telescope's primary mirror threatened to cripple the mission, NASA initially compensated using computer enhancement and later flew five Space Shuttle servicing missions to install corrective optics and upgrade components. In 1993, the administration of President Bill Clinton sought to heavily reduce NASA's budget while protecting those jobs by directing that the station integrate the Russian Federation into the design. Consequently, the Clinton Administration announced in 1993 that Space Station Freedom would be absorbed into what became the ISS program via a bilateral agreement with Russia. This infusion of American currency allowed Russia to preserve its faltering space sector post-Cold War and maintain its status as a premier spaceflight power. While the US financed and constructed the majority of the ISS, Russia, Canada, Japan, and the ESA provided critical hardware and modules. Between the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 and the first operational CCP mission in 2020, NASA relied on the Soyuz program to transport its astronauts to the ISS. A Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched to space atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 launch vehicle and the capsule returns to Earth via splashdown in the ocean near Florida. The program's first operational mission, SpaceX Crew-1, launched on November 16, 2020. Boeing Starliner operational flights will now commence with Boeing Starliner-1 which will launched atop an Atlas V N22 launch vehicle. Instead of a splashdown, Starliner capsules return on land with airbags at one of four designated sites in the western US. The placement of these ground stations approximately 120 degrees apart around the planet provides the ability for communications to spacecraft throughout the Solar System even as the Earth rotates about its axis on a daily basis. The system is controlled at a 24x7 operations center at JPL in Pasadena, California, which manages recurring communications linkages with up to 40 spacecraft. The system is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Both countries provide access to the station via launch systems noting Russia's unique role as the sole provider of delivery of crew and cargo upon retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 and prior to commencement of NASA COTS and crew flights. In July 2022, NASA and Roscosmos signed a deal to share space station flights enabling crew from each country to ride on the systems provided by the other. Current geopolitical conditions in late 2022 make it unlikely that cooperation will be extended to other programs such as Artemis or lunar exploration. The United Kingdom signed the Artemis Accords on October 13 2020, with one of the major roles of the United Kingdom being the design of the habitation module and surface module of the Lunar Gateway. === Israel Space Agency === The ISA and NASA cooperate with each other on scientific endeavours frequently. Multiple ISA experiments in space were done via the Shuttle program, including the Israeli Space Agency Investigation About Hornets also known as the Hornet Experiment in 1992 and the MEIDEX Freestar Experiment in 2003. Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, was aboard the STS-107 mission on Space Shuttle Columbia. Israel signed the Artemis Accords on January 26 2022.

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for designing and deploying aerial robots (aerobots) to revolutionise Mars exploration. The Martian environment, characterised by a tenuous atmosphere, extreme thermal variations, and diverse, often inaccessible terrain, presents fundamental challenges to the operational range and efficiency of conventional rovers and landers. Aerobots can overcome many of these limitations by enabling rapid regional surveys, accessing high-priority sites beyond rover reach, and supporting human exploration through environmental reconnaissance. Drawing on insights from past planetary missions, including the Ingenuity helicopter, the framework integrates planetary science constraints with aerospace engineering principles to address aerodynamic performance, structural integrity, autonomy, and environmental resilience. Central to this work is the Mars Aerobot Design Thinking Matrix, a decision-support tool that links mission objectives to testable engineering requirements, enabling systematic trade-off analysis across configuration, energy strategy, and operational margins. The proposed framework aims to guide the development of aerobots capable of sustained and scientifically productive operations in the unique conditions of Mars. Being the predecessor of Perseverance in terms of design, Mars Science Laboratory’s (MSL) Curiosity rover, comparatively, has covered a distance of around 36 km in its career Hence, Mars sample-return missions remain a top priority for NASA and other space agencies, as analysing these soils is critical for assessing the planet’s viability for human exploration 37 . Electrification accompanies dust motion. Charge transfer during collisions and atmospheric separation can generate electric fields and occasional discharges, though limited by Mars’ weak breakdown fields (~20 kV m −1 vs ~3 MV m −1 on Earth) 58 , 70 . Triboelectric charging around fast rotors may produce small fields or faint glows, as observed with Ingenuity 71 . Engineering innovations—such as rotor optimisation, lightweight landing gear, and ruggedised electronics for extreme conditions—enabled effective operation in Mars’ environment. Comprehensive design, testing, and validation, including flight, structural, and environmental assessments, confirmed Ingenuity’s resilience to space travel, Martian conditions, and operational stresses, securing its role as a technology demonstrator for future missions. The following subsections outline these challenges and the key design, development, and testing considerations for successful aerobot deployment. Additionally, the speed of sound on Mars is 70% lower than on Earth 38 , meaning that rotary aerodynamic surfaces are more prone to approaching supersonic speeds, potentially causing compressibility effects like shock waves that further degrade performance. While existing literature, including data from Ingenuity’s flights, offers valuable insights into these phenomena, empirical data remains limited. This limitation complicates the design process, necessitating extensive research and specialised airfoil designs optimised for Mars’ unique aerodynamic conditions 96 . To mitigate the reduced aerodynamic damping, the rotor blades were made extremely stiff, raising the natural flap mode frequencies to a higher range, where they are less likely to interfere with the helicopter’s control system 97 . Flight testing The flight testing of the Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, was conducted in the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Space Simulator, a cylindrical chamber 7.6 m in diameter and 24.4 m in height, designed to replicate Mars’ low atmospheric pressure and gravity 97 . The integrity of the rotor system is confirmed through destructive load testing, which evaluates the structure’s ability to withstand extreme forces, and modal testing, which identifies the natural frequencies and vibration modes. In the case of Ingenuity, rotor blades were tested to ensure they could withstand the high centrifugal forces experienced during flight 97 . Landing gear, designed for stability on uneven terrain, undergoes drop tests with scale models to emulate various landing scenarios. Table 1 Summarised comparison between aerobot and rover Attributes Aerobot Rover Traverse Speed High Very Low Obstacle Overpassing High Very Low Dynamic Agility High Very Low Specific Range High Very Low Operational Endurance Low Medium Payload Capacity Low High Shape & Size Flexibility Low High Robotic Capability Low High The lateral velocity of the small Ingenuity Helicopter is capped at 2 m s −1 , with a capacity of going up to 20 m s −1 , whereas its companion Perseverance rover can travel across a hard flat surface with a speed of 0.04 m s −1 29 , 30 . Flying a rotary-propelled vehicle in the Martian thin atmosphere consumes significant power and produces in-system heat, due to the requirement of generating sufficient thrust aerodynamically—particularly for helicopter-type aerobots, whose rotor blades must operate with high tip speeds close to the local speed of sound. Consequently, Ingenuity has flying endurance of only over a couple of minutes 29 . Rovers on the other hand are slow but have higher operational endurance regarding continuous travel and experimentation. Given that rovers can last over a decade, they can overall cover a wider land when compared to a short-term aerobot mission. Ingenuity’s demonstrations motivate disciplined advances in rotor aerodynamics, structural stiffness, sensing and navigation, and ground-test methods that reflect low-density, low-damping regimes. The paper identifies priorities for future work: improved aerodynamic performance at low Reynolds number; propulsion and energy strategies resilient to dust and irradiance variability; materials and coatings tolerant of thermal cycling and abrasion; autonomy capable of reliable navigation without GNSS; and delivery approaches that reduce dependence on flat, hazard-free terrain.