I pilot NASA's first and only Mars helicopter. My job can be like a video game, but not with a joystick. | Business Insider

When I'm not on Mars time, I wake up, eat a breakfast of bread and cheese, and go to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory around 9 a.m.

I started off doing a lot of academic work before I landed at JPL in 2013 — not so much by design. It's just an opportunity that came around, and then we were doing helicopters.Bob BalaramMembers of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter team stand next to the Collier Trophy. Left to right: Teddy Tzanetos, Bob Balaram, MiMi Aung, Bobby Braun, Larry James, and Håvard Grip.Then Bob started developing the idea for Ingenuity.

The Perseverance rover took a selfie with Ingenuity shortly after dropping the helicopter to the Martian surface, in April 2021.On the day of the first flight, we up-linked the flight plan in the daytime, and then in the afternoon tried to go to sleep for a few hours. I didn't get any sleep. Then I got up around midnight to go to work and get the first data back from Ingenuity.We were trembling. We'd come all this way and it could all just go wrong in a moment.

That's the starting point. Then we can get down to planning the exact details of the flight. Basically every maneuver that the helicopter takes, we sit and design here on Earth.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Ingenuity snapped this photo of its shadow on the ground below as it flew on Mars for the first time, April 19, 2020.Of course, part of my job is looking at how did it go afterwards. Typically within a day or so, we get data back from the helicopter. That's the moment of truth, always. That's when we assess the success of the flight. We have learned a lot. Sometimes we make adjustments for the next flight.

It's also possible that it stops working in less spectacular ways. Maybe it doesn't wake up one morning, because there was a solder joint that went bad.

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