Aung dreamed of helping NASA intercept and amplify faint signals sent back to Earth from humanity's farthest-flung spacecraft, including the Voyagers.

Aung could remain as a manager—a plum position in the hierarchy at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)—or take over a fledgling project to develop a small helicopter that might one day fly on Mars.

Again and again, at JPL, in the upper floors of NASA's headquarters building in Washington, DC, and in the halls of Congress, these critics attempted to kill Ingenuity.

An engineer named Bob Balaram started toying with the idea in the 1990s, and he and a small team received a bit of money to put pen to paper on the concept.

It received new life in 2013 when the longtime director of JPL, a Lebanon-born scientist and engineer named Charles Elachi, was touring the guidance and navigation division.

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