The idea to include a helicopter in the Mars 2020 mission was opposed by several people. Up until the end of the 2010s, several NASA leaders, scientists and JPL employees argued against integrating a helicopter into the mission. For three years, the future
Ingenuity was developed outside the
Mars 2020 project and its budget.
[60][61] And although NASA management accepted assurances in the spring of 2018 that the addition of a helicopter would not harm the goals of the expedition, Mars 2020 chief scientist, Kenneth Farley, stated "I have personally been opposed to it because we are working very hard for efficiencies and spending 30 days working on a technology demonstration does not further those goals directly from the science point of view".
[62] Farley was convinced that the helicopter was a distraction from the priority scientific tasks, unacceptable even for a short time.
[62]
The skepticism on the part of NASA leadership was not unfounded. Scientists, engineers and managers proceeded from a pragmatic comparison of the benefits of additional aerial reconnaissance with the costs that inevitably fall on the schedule for the rover to complete all the tasks assigned to it. During a live-stream from NASA, MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity Project Manager, and
Jennifer Trosper discussed the value of Ingenuity. Trosper argued that the rover would outpace the helicopter due to its auto-navigation capability, thus negating one of central arguments for the value to the mission of the helicopter. During the operations on Mars, Tosper was shown to be correct when, in the spring of 2022, at the beginning of Sol 400 the helicopter fell behind the rover.