NASA is quietly rewriting the script for human exploration of the Red Planet, turning robots from remote-controlled tools into autonomous partners tasked with keeping crews alive far from home.

"The results reported here can be crucial when down-selecting which samples, if not all, are returned to Earth." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

NASA’s first Mars helicopter turned a risky experiment into a new way of exploring another world, and now its successors are being shaped in some of the harshest deserts on Earth. The next generation ...