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NASA ran into a snag last year when… An Ingenuity Mars helicopter has crashed On the red planet. The space agency concluded that the accident was caused by the vehicle’s inability to distinguish flat land from featureless sand dunes. To avoid such hiccups in the future, a team of NASA scientists recently descended on Death Valley, California, to brave the heat and test a team of search drones in similarly featureless areas.
“Ingenuity is designed to fly over good terrain, estimating its movement by looking at visible features on the ground,” he said. Roland Brokersa drone pilot and researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “But in the end it had to cross quieter areas where this became difficult. We want future vehicles to be more versatile and not have to worry about flying over difficult areas like these sand dunes.”
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This is not the first time that NASA has undertaken a field trip to the hottest places on Earth. The agency has used Death Valley since the 1970s to test various technologies in preparation for missions to Mars. This time, the team was testing Extended strong air autonomy program, an autonomous flight system designed to handle a greater range of terrain on Mars. This would prevent another Creativity-style accident involving future explorers.
The team had to endure temperatures that reached a maximum of around 113 degrees Fahrenheit, with only a small tent to protect them from the intense sun and heat. While NASA has used Death Valley for testing for decades, the JPL team that went in 2025 was only the third team ever to be licensed to fly research drones in Death Valley.
Death Valley officials were only too happy to accommodate the researchers.
“It is a powerful reminder that the park is protected not only for its natural beauty, but as a living laboratory that actively helps us understand desert environments,” said the Superintendent of Death Valley National Park. Mike Reynolds.
JPL researchers huddled under tents to stay cool in the scorching temperatures of Death Valley as they tested drones.
Useful results
All of these tests were conducted in April and September, so NASA had some time to review the data and determine what worked. According to the agency, the results showed that different camera filters were effective for different types of terrain, and improved algorithms enabled drones to land and land more safely.
In addition to Death Valley, the team also took their drones to the Dumont Dunes area in the Mojave Desert, an area known for its massive sand dunes, which is a popular spot for off-road recreational vehicles, snowboarding, and sandboarding. It’s also known for its diversity of dune formations, providing NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory team with more data to test.
There are currently no specific missions scheduled to send a helicopter to Mars, but NASA and the European Space Agency are developing two small Ingenuity helicopters that may one day help return all the samples. Faithfully collected by the Perseverance Mars rover On its journeys across Mars. These helicopters will undoubtedly use technology that was tested and improved during the NASA field trip to Death Valley.