https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akgzga/how-nasa-is-pushing-a-software-update-to-mars-to-get-ingenuity-flying

When it comes to regularly updating our devices, we’re all guilty of a little (or a lot) of procrastination. This wasn’t a choice for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Perseverance team when they received a software update request on April 9th from a device they couldn’t ignore—the mission’s four-pound helicopter, Ingenuity, currently on Mars.

Ingenuity, an $85 million NASA “flight experiment,” will pull off the first powered flight on an alien world when it takes off. It landed on Mars in February atop the Perseverance rover’s back and on April 7th first began stretching out and testing its rotor blades after the 173-million-mile journey from Earth to Mars. It was a couple of days later on Ingenuity’s 49th Martian day, and just before its planned first flight, that NASA caught wind that something might not be quite right, explained Dave Lavery, Program Executive for Solar System Exploration at NASA HQ and Helicopter Program Executive, in an email.