LOS ANGELES—After exceeding all expectations with its initial four test flights, the first ever by an aircraft over the surface of another planet, NASA’s tiny Mars robot helicopter Ingenuity is ready for graduation. The U.S. space agency announced on Friday that Ingenuity is shifting from a pure proof-of-concept, technology demonstration mode to a more ambitious mission gauging how aerial scouting and other functions might benefit future scientific exploration of the Red Planet. Ingenuity’s 30-day planned project extension was outlined during a briefing from its mission control center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, where the twin-rotor aircraft was designed and built. The new “operational demonstration” phase of the 4-pound (1.8 kg), solar-powered chopper began with its fourth takeoff on a nearly two-minute flight Friday morning, Data returned from Ingenuity later in the day showed that it covered a round-trip distance of 872 feet (266 meters)—roughly the length …