NASA to Launch Mars Rover in 2020

Al Chen and Swati Mohan guide us through the many stages of a rover’s flight to Mars.

Tune in to learn about NASA's search for life on Mars. Mission experts will discuss how the Mars 2020 rover will take samples on the surface of Mars for a future mission, Mars Sample Return, to ret...

This image presents a selection of the 23 cameras on NASA's 2020 Mars rover. Many are improved versions of the cameras on the Curiosity rover, with a few new additions as well.

Perseverance carries several microphones, which will pick up the sound of Martian wind, rover activities, and in the case of SuperCam, the sound of rock being vaporized.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been investigating rocks at the front of the delta in Mars’ Jezero Crater along the path indicated in this annotated image taken by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Or...

The drill hole from Perseverance's second sample-collection attempt can be seen, in this composite of two images taken on Sept. 1, by one of the rover’s navigation cameras. 

The flight model of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

This annotated image shows a rock target called “Garde” as analyzed by SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), one of the instruments o...

Seventh-grader Alexander Mather of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia, submitted the winning entry in the agency's "Name the Rover" essay contest, making the case to name the Mars 20...

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This is one still frame from a sequence captured...

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover onboard launches from Space Launch Complex 41, Thursday, July 30, 2020, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Flori...

Two members of the field team set up cameras as part of the simulated rover operation. The images they provided were intended to stand in for what a rover's instruments might send back from Mars. 

Matt Smith, flight director for the second Mars 2020 mission trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-2), studying the screens at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA’s Perseverance rover deposited the first of several sample tubes onto the Martian surface on Dec. 21, 2022, the 653rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This composite image of the tube, fil...

This GIF shows NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collecting two samples of regolith – broken rock and dust – with a regolith sampling bit on the end of its robotic arm. The samples were collected on D...

This is the first acoustic recording of laser impacts on a rock target on Mars from March 2, 2021, the 12th sol (Martian day) from Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument. The sounds of 30 impacts are h...

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured a historic group selfie with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on April 6, 2021. 

A large dust storm on Mars, nearly twice the size of the United States, covered the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet in early January 2022, leading to some of NASA’s explorers on the surface h...

This 360-degree mosaic from the “Airey Hill” location inside Jezero Crater was generated using 993 individual images taken by the Perseverance Mars rover’s Mastcam-Z from Nov. 3-6. The rover remain...

Meet a Martian sample that has been collected and is awaiting return to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

This artist's concept is loosely based on the Curiosity rover in NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. Mission planners would potentially leverage aspects of this rover design for a Mars mission ...

The Mastcam-Z imager on NASA’s Perseverance rover captured a series of images on July 6 that were stitched together to show a field of boulders deposited in Jezero Crater by a fast-moving ancient r...

This annotated image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows the journey NASA’s Perseverance rover has taken and will take in the future as it heads toward Jezero Crater’s delta on Mars...

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter unlocked its blades, allowing them to spin freely, on April 7, 2021, the 47th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This image was captured by the Mastcam-Z imager aboard...

A tray holding 39 sample tubes – each protected in a gold-colored sheath – is installed in NASA's Perseverance rover in this picture taken at the agency's Kennedy Space Center on May 21, 2020.