Perseverance

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Perseverance is NASA's most advanced Mars rover, sent not only to study the planet but to begin bringing a piece of it home. Built on the proven body of Curiosity, the Mars 2020 rover launched on 30 July 2020 and used a guided sky-crane descent to touch down on 18 February 2021 inside Jezero crater — an ancient river delta where a lake once stood, one of the most promising places on Mars to look for signs of past life. Its central task is astrobiology: searching the delta's rocks for chemical and textural biosignatures, and drilling pencil-thin cores of the most promising material into sealed titanium tubes. These are being cached for the planned Mars Sample Return campaign, a joint NASA and ESA effort to fly them back to Earth in the 2030s for study in laboratories far more capable than anything that could be carried to Mars; as insurance, Perseverance has already laid down a backup depot of tubes on the surface. The mission also carried two pioneering experiments. MOXIE made oxygen from the carbon-dioxide atmosphere, a first rehearsal of living off the land for future crews. And tucked beneath the rover's belly rode Ingenuity, a small helicopter that on 19 April 2021 made the first powered, controlled flight by any aircraft on another world — a feat its makers likened to the Wright brothers. Built for five flights, Ingenuity flew seventy-two over nearly three years before damaging a rotor blade. Perseverance, meanwhile, has climbed out of Jezero and onto its rim, still exploring and still gathering the samples a later mission will one day retrieve.

1. 2020Launch toward Jezero craterLaunch

   An Atlas V sends Perseverance and the Ingenuity helicopter toward an ancient delta on Mars.

2. 2021Landing in Jezero craterLanding

   Guided by terrain-relative navigation, the rover touches down beside a dried-up river delta.

3. 2021Ingenuity's first flightMilestone

   Ingenuity makes the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world.

4. 2021First rock core sealedMilestone

   Perseverance drills and seals its first sample of Martian rock for eventual return to Earth.

5. 2023Sample depot at Three ForksDeployment

   The rover lays down a backup cache of sealed sample tubes as insurance for Mars Sample Return.

6. 2024Ingenuity's final flightMilestone

   After seventy-two flights over nearly three years, the helicopter damages a rotor blade and is retired.

7. 2024Climbing out onto Jezero's rimMilestone

   Perseverance reaches the crater rim to explore older rocks while still collecting samples.

Images

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