Mission Timeline

The aeroshell containing NASA’s Perseverance rover guides itself towards the Martian surface as it descends through the atmosphere in this illustration. Hundreds of critical events must execute per...

This image shows where NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will take its test flights. Helicopter engineers added the locations for the rover landing site, the airfield, and the flight zone on an imag...

Members of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter team are pictured with the Collier Trophy during the Robert J. Collier Dinner in Washington on June 9, 2022.

NASA's Perseverance rover has been on the surface of Mars since February of 2021, joining NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been studying the Red Planet since 2012.

The debris shield, a protective covering on the bottom of NASA’s Perseverance rover, was released on March 21, 2021. The debris shield protects the agency’s Ingenuity helicopter during landing; rel...

This time-lapse video, taken on Oct. 8, 2019, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, captures the first time the Mars 2020 rover carries its full weight on its legs and wheels.

An animated GIF depicts the Martian surface below the Perseverance rover, showing the results of the Jan. 15, 2022, percussive drill test to clear cored-rock fragments from one of the rover’s sampl...

NASA’s Perseverance captured this image June 13 of a sample it cored from a conglomerate rock called “Emerald Lake.” This “Otis Peak” core shows distinctly colored areas that are individual mineral...

Communication engineers at the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California monitor the Atlas V rocket carrying Perseverance to Mars on July 30, 2020.

During their only opportunity to see NASA's next Mars rover from inside JPL's clean room prior to its shipment to Cape Canaveral, members of the media interview the builders of the Mars 2020 mission.

Perseverance’s first cored sample of Mars rock is sealed inside its titanium container tube in this image taken by rover’s Sampling and Caching System Camera (known as CacheCam).  

Another view of NASA's Perseverance rover attached to a spin table during a test of its mass properties at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The image was taken on April 7, 2020.

MEDLI2 sensors are installed on the Mars 2020 heat shield and back shell prior that will protect NASA's Perseverance rover on its journey to the surface of Mars. 

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover is heading to the Red Planet to search for signs of ancient life, collect samples for future return to Earth and help pave the way for human exploration. The rov...

NASA's spacecraft on Mars are all affected by the winds of the Red Planet, which can produce a tiny dust devil or a global dust storm. 

The Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this view of the rover’s deck on Feb. 20, 2021. This view provides a good look at PIXL, one of the instruments on ...

This black and white image was taken by NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter during its third flight on April 25, 2021.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter spotted this location, nicknamed “Raised Ridges,” during its ninth flight, on July 5. Scientists hope to visit “Raised Ridges” with the Perseverance rover in the fu...

This image shows the rock core from “Berea” inside inside the drill of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Each core the rover takes is about the size of a piece of classroom chalk: 0.5 inches (13 mill...

The spacecraft that will carry NASA's Perseverance rover to Mars is examined prior to an acoustic test in the Environmental Test Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Th...

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to take this image of the location where three of its 10 sample tubes will be deposited.

These images show changes in the dust accumulation over the course of four days on the rim of the collection tube containing Perseverance’s 14th sample. The images were acquired on Oct. 22, Oct. 26...

Members of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission pose at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission, on July 17, 2019.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket and Mars 2020 mission with the Perseverance rover sit on Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral at sunset.

The launch period window for NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance opens on July 20, 2020. The mission marks humanity's first step in returning samples from another planet and will seek past signs on Mars ...