NASA's next rover to the Red Planet is slated to launch no earlier than July 30. These highlights will get you up to speed on the ambitious mission.

The Red Planet's surface has been visited by eight NASA spacecraft. The ninth will be the first that includes a roundtrip ticket in its flight plan.

Learn more about the agency's next Red Planet mission during a live event on June 17.

Two astronauts collected Moon rocks on Apollo 11. It will take three robotic systems working together to gather up the first Mars rock samples for return to Earth.

An instrument called SHERLOC will, with the help of its partner WATSON, hunt for signs of ancient life by detecting organic molecules and minerals.

A NASA Wallops Flight Facility cargo plane transported more than two tons of equipment — including the rover's sample collection tubes — to Florida for this summer's liftoff.

Winners include the JPL-managed "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign, NASA's Global Climate Change website and Solar System Interactive.

The agency's new Mars rover is put through a series of tests in vacuum chambers, acoustic chambers and more to get ready for the Red Planet.

Stacking spacecraft components on top of each other is one of the final assembly steps before a mission launches to the Red Planet.

Team members searched for signs of ancient microscopic life there, just as NASA's latest rover will on the Red Planet next year.

A pair of zoomable cameras will help scientists and rover drivers with high-resolution color images.

These are the scientists and engineers who built NASA's next Mars rover and who will guide it to a safe landing in Jezero Crater.

Vaneeza Rupani's essay was chosen as the name for the small spacecraft, which will mark NASA's first attempt at powered flight on another planet.

As a longtime fan of space exploration, Vaneeza Rupani appreciates the creativity and collaboration involved with trying to fly on another planet.

Like much of the rest of the world, the Mars rover team is pushing forward with its mission-critical work while putting the health and safety of their colleagues and community first.

The mission team performed a crucial weight-balancing test on the rover in preparation for this summer's history-making launch to the Red Planet.

The team also fueled the rover's sky crane to get ready for this summer's history-making launch.

After the rover was shipped from JPL to Kennedy Space Center, the team is getting closer to finalizing the spacecraft for launch later this summer.

The Mars Helicopter is riding to the Red Planet this summer with NASA's Perseverance rover. The helicopter's chief engineer, Bob Balaram, shares the saga of how it came into being.

As part of NASA's 'Send Your Name to Mars' campaign, they've been stenciled onto three microchips along with essays from NASA's 'Name the Rover' contest. Next stop: Mars.

The system will be collecting and storing Martian rock and soil. Its installation marks another milestone in the march toward the July launch period.

NASA chose a seventh-grader from Virginia as winner of the agency's "Name the Rover" essay contest. Alexander Mather's entry for "Perseverance" was voted tops among 28,000 entries.

After a months-long contest among students to name NASA's newest Mars rover, the agency will reveal the winning name — and the winning student — this Thursday.

The leadership council for Mars 2020 science added two new members who represent the interests of scientists destined to handle and study the first samples from Red Planet.

The agency's first step in returning rocks from Mars just arrived at Kennedy Space Center. The Mars 2020 team now begins readying for a launch to the Red Planet this July.

SuperCam is a rock-vaporizing instrument that will help scientists hunt for Mars fossils.

Nine finalists have been chosen in the essay contest for K-12 students across U.S. to name NASA's next Mars rover. Now you can help by voting for your favorite.

155 students from across the U.S. have been chosen as semifinalists in NASA's essay contest to name the Mars 2020 rover, and see it launch from Cape Canaveral this July.