Marswatch: high hopes for first powered controlled flight on another planet

Mars mission's next major milestone will be deployment of Ingenuity, a small helicopter

Welcome to the first in a new series of occasional Marswatch columns. With the change of administration in America, the moon landings scheduled for 2024 are likely to be moved back to their original target of 2028. So we thought we'd change our focus to Mars.

The big news at Mars is the landing of Nasa's rover Perseverance. It touched down on 18 February and has been successfully exploring the 28-mile-wide (45km) Jezero crater ever since.