In laboratories far from the Martian surface, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are quietly rehearsing the future — folding and unfolding a flexible radar antenna that must one day survive alone on another world. The SkyFall mission, building on the improbable success of the Ingenuity helicopter, aims to send three autonomous rotorcraft to Mars in 2028 to search for water beneath the planet's surface. It is the kind of work that rarely announces itself: patient, methodical, and entirely necessary — the unglamorous foundation upon which grand exploration is built.