Without new landers or rovers, it's helicopters or bust for NASA's Mars program

Ars Technica reports that NASA has no firm plans to send new landers or rovers to Mars for the first time in more than three decades. Instead, the agency's near-term focus is on aerial drones, with the SkyFall mission — a fleet of three helicopters — set to launch as soon as late 2028. SkyFall will ride along with NASA's Space Reactor-1 Freedom mission, a nuclear electric propulsion demonstrator estimated to cost two point one billion dollars, which repurposes the core module of the canceled Gateway lunar station. The mission builds on the success of the Ingenuity helicopter, which became the first rotorcraft to fly on another world in 2021.

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