Mars is a graveyard for explorers. Many orbiters, landers, rovers, and other mechanical critters that have either been cremated in the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere or fallen silent in the ochre, radiation-smothered sands below, right away or at the end of their technological lifespans. Many belonged to NASA, and the mantra of their droids seems to be: If you’re going to die, you might overachieve before you go. These robots—the ones that survived their interplanetary journey and arrival intact—all had clear scientific or technological objectives to accomplish before their mechanisms seized up, or their power sources ran dry, perhaps when their solar panels became fully coated in fine dust. But from the late-1990s Mars Pathfinder and the early-2000s Spirit and Opportunity rovers, to the 2010s Curiosity wanderer and the contemporary InSight geophysical mission (which perished in late 2022), so many of them blew right past their mission timelines and operated for months or even years beyond what was expected. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter—affectionately known as Ginny, the first aircraft to achieve powered and controlled flight on …