Mars Ingenuity helicopter mission extended by NASA
This business of we've only planned 4-5 flights in the main mission but will extend by 30 more days seems like intentional under-committment to me. NASA seems to have done this with most of the previous rover missions as well - all of them significantly extended missions.Maybe there's politics around funding. I wouldn't be surprised if the major costs are people costs over months and sometimes years to support the science vs. the actual core mission costs but it may be a big sticker shock to ask the Congress at one go. So possibly they ask funding for a short under balled-mission (which no one really scrutinizes) and then keep getting funding extensions citing opportunity costs (the probe is already on Mars, we can get extended value etc). I can imagine there's massive politics here, so it maybe is the only smart game to play