Monitoring Spacecraft Launches

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.

The room serves as the nerve center for NASA's Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that provides communication links between planetary exploration spacecraft and their mission teams on Earth. The majority of space events, such as launches, orbit insertions and landing, are monitored from this room.

As with previous Mars landers and rovers, the Mars 2020 mission relies on Mars-orbiting spacecraft to relay data from the Perseverance rover to the antennas of the Deep Space Network.

Mars 2020 is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA's Artemis lunar exploration plans.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.

For more information about the mission, go to: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/.