Everything’s in flux with a big complex vehicle like this, but we have a broadly similar vehicle to MSL so you can imagine similar overall timelines for most things. The Curiosity rover first drove on sol 16 of its surface mission.
Actually, I’m mot sure it’s all that hard. The trick was building something that could fly in thin air (high rotor velocity). That’s made somewhat easier by the low gravity.
But the rest is something you can do with a $200 toy quadcopter. it flies up, takes some pictures, finds a place to land, and sets down to charge until it can fly again. A $200 Mavic will do much more than that.
Unique to the Mars environment, the thing also has to keep its batteries and electronics warm. I’m guessing the hardest part of the design was building something that could be stowed, resist the forces of launch and six months in the deep space environment, then be deployed on the surface and set itself up. The actual flying and navigating part is known tech, even without GPS.
I think the performance necessary for a helicopter on Mars is at least a magnitude greater than on Earth. The gravity is not all too dissimilar, but the atmosphere is far far thinner.
I’ve seen quite a few pictures now and a fair few rounded rocks that have been labelled (or commented on) as being shaped by the wind. Does anyone know if there has been any sign of rocks shaped by the water that existed on this site? Or would these rocks have been buried long ago?
It would appear so …
That’s the Curiosity site, but still interesting thanks. It’s amazing those little pebbles are still in situ after all that time.
So just make it lighter. Easy peasy! 
Well, it’s about a third the gravity. You’d sure feel the difference but, yes, it’s wayyyyy thinner air.
The thing is, as anyone who’s watched a drone take off can see, drones can generate astounding lift relative to their size. Even affordable toy-grade drones can take off like a rocket; the challenge is often to ease them into the air. Ingenuity’s rotors are bigger than a normal drone, sure, but it doesn’t look that different from other drones. If someone was playing with it in a park you wouldn’t think it was out of place, just bigger than most toy drones (the rotors are about four feet across.)
The real challenges are
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As @Sam_Stone points out, the cold is a real challenge to batteries. Mars at night gets cold enough to freeze carbon dioxide. It’s, like, REALLY cold. Every night is as cold as the coldest place on Earth ever gets. That isn’t delightful for a battery powered thing.
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It has to fly itself. You can’t R/C it. You can tell it how you want the flight to go, but once it’s off and flitting around that’s all programmed in advance or handling by its flight software.
First Drive:
Video conference of this and other stuff:
Brian
Supercam image:
Brian
So, I just finished watching several different Internet videos which feature the sound of a robot on Mars firing a laser beam. (Example.)
PEW! PEW! PEW!!!
OK, so it wasn’t really much of a “PEW PEW PEW”, but still–it was the sound a laser makes, when fired on Mars, as recorded by the robot the laser is attached to.
Also, the sound of the wind. On Mars.
We should be much more worried when it’s the Martian robots firing lasers on Earth. That ended badly for humanity the last time Orson Welles reported on it.
I know, right? For all the world’s problems right now, this is an amazing time to be alive.
Thirding.
Sounds of metal wheels on Martian rocks:
Brian
As cool as it is, that’s the worst noise I’ve ever heard. They should probably take that in to the shop to get checked out.
Ingenuity (Helicopter) preview media briefing:
Brian
It appears that Mars is actually quite a seasonably warm place, and there may be people there, but there’s really no way to know for sure.
At least, according to the November, 1929 issue of Popular Science Monthly. How far we’ve come!
I have a silly question about that audio recording: Why did they do it?
Was is just for the value of generating amazement and wonder?
Or are they looking for some sort of useful scientific data? If so, what kind?
It seems to me that it was mostly a stunt for public relations(and it sure worked for me!) Space stuff is amazing and science-fictiony, but the public tends to get bored after a while, so the audio was worth it just for the PR value…
But what serious science stuff justified the expense and extra weight of adding audio equipment?
This was covered during one of the many press briefings. The cost and weight was quite minimal and the audio adds a marvelous new dimension to the experience, and it may yet produce valuable results. The biggest concern is that it “do no harm” by way of jeopardizing the main science missions, and there was very high confidence that it would not.