In this image, the second stage of the Black Brant IX sounding rocket separates from the ASPIRE payload. The third and final flight test of th...

This high-definition image was taken on Sept. 7, 2018, during the third and final test flight of the ASPIRE payload. It was the fastest inflat...

JPL mechanical technician Eddie Castro uses a paint meter to measure the paint thickness on the Mars 2020 rover chassis.

This artist concept shows the Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, which will travel with NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission, currentl...

The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with NASA's Mars 2020 rover, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to d...

A technician works on the descent stage for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission inside JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility. Mars 2020 is slate...

A slice of a meteorite scientists have determined came from Mars placed inside an oxygen plasma cleaner, which removes organics from the outsi...

Close-up of a slice of a meteorite scientists have determined came from Mars. This slice will likely be used here on Earth for testing a laser...

Rohit Bhartia of NASA's Mars 2020 mission holds a slice of a meteorite scientists have determined came from Mars. This slice will likely be us...

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover exploring Mars.

NASA's Mars 2020 rover looks at the horizon in this artist's concept.

This artist's rendition depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover studying its surroundings.

This artist's concept shows a close-up of NASA's Mars 2020 rover studying an outcrop.

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover exploring Mars.

This artist's rendition depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover studying rocks with its robotic arm.

This artist's rendition depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover studying a Mars rock outrcrop.

A 58-foot-tall Black Brant IX sounding rocket launches from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Oct. 4. This was the first test of the Mars 2020...

This image shows a 3-D printed model of Mastcam-Z, one of the science cameras on NASA's Mars 2020 rover. Mastcam-Z will include a 3:1 zoom lens.

This image shows one of the enhanced engineering cameras with a prototype lens for the Hazcams, which will watch for obstacles encountered by ...

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,...

This is the top-down view into a sample tube is the type of image CacheCam provides to the Mars 2020 team.

The left view is a sample view of a pile of rocks taken in the "Mars Yard" testing area at JPL. The right picture illustrates one way ...

This artist concept features NASA's Mars 2020 rover on the surface of Mars.

This artist's rendering depicts NASA's Mars 2020 rover, with its robotic arm extended.

A prototype of the Lander Vision System for NASA's Mars 2020 mission was tested in this Dec. 9, 2014, flight of a Masten Space Systems "Xo...

This artist concept shows the location of the RIMFAX instrument on the next rover scheduled to launch for Mars.

The Range Trigger technique shrinks the Mars 2020 rovers landing ellipse significantly, landing the rover closer to the target area of greates...

The MOXIE investigation on NASA's Mars 2020 rover will extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. In this image, MOXIE Principal Investigator...

This 2016 image comes from computer-assisted-design work on NASA's 2020 Mars rover. The design leverages many successful features of NASA's Cu...

NASA's Mars 2020 Project will re-use the basic engineering of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity to send a different rover to Mars, with...

Buzz Aldrin, an Apollo 11 astronaut who walked on the moon, makes a holographic appearance in 'Destination: Mars,' a mixed-reality tour of a p...

Women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory pose for a photo in mission control in h...

These eight places on Mars are potential landing sites under consideration as the destination for the Mars 2020 rover mission.

This diagram illustrates the current iteration (July 2015) of the lens packaging for the Mars 2020 Rover's instrument, Mastcam-Z.

Sample radargram of a glacier in Svalbard obtained with the HUBRA radar instrument, a precursor of RIMFAX built by the FFI team.

Photograph showing the prototype RIMFAX antenna attached to a snowmobile during tests in Svalbard, Norway.

MOXIE Functional Block Diagram

Figure 2. This figure demonstrates that the PIXL instrument detects important trace elements (red) at 10's ppm. Insert: Rb, Sr, Y, Zr are clea...

PIXL breadboard maps of a paleoarchean altered conglomerate with unconformity surface, revealing complex lithology including rounded pyrite, c...

This 2015 diagram shows components of the investigations payload for NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission.

This diagram, superimposed on a photo of Martian landscape, illustrates a concept called "adaptive caching," which is in development f...

An artist's rendering of the SuperCam instrument aboard the next generation Mars rover scheduled to visit the Red Planet in 2020.

Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) is an exploration technology investigation that will produce oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Robots are paving the way for future human missions to Mars.

This diagram shows the science instruments for NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission.

This illustration depicts the mechanism and conceptual research targets for an instrument named Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman ...

This illustration depicts the mechanism and conceptual research targets for an instrument named Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman ...

Antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network provide two-way communications with spacecraft exploring the planets.

Goldstone's 230-foot (70-m) antenna tracks under a full moon. This photograph was taken on Jan. 11, 2012.

Late night in the desert: Goldstone's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna tracks spacecraft day and night. This photograph was taken on Jan. 11, 2012.