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Something I don't think people appreciate is how slowly things move on mars in general. Curiosity, a huge success, has moved a total of 20.38 kilometers as of two days ago. That's after 2359 martian days.

It's hard for me to imagine a drone not being effective!

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/whereistherovernow/?ImageI...

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To be fair, though, a lot of that is by choice. What advantage is there in moving quickly and taking on all of the associated risks when there's lots to see and do while moving slowly and spending extended periods of time parked at specifically interesting sites?

By having alternate crafts that can move quickly, we might be able to better guesstimate if it's worth the time of the slow rover to change course and investigate a blip on the map. Alternatively, fast craft could fly around and drop beacons on areas of interest to be investigated at a later time. Beacons that could be sensor probes returning data of interest.

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