Mission Timeline

An illustration of the planet Mars, highlighting NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover and future human explorers.

NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen and Lori Glaze congratulate Alexander Mather during a March 5, 2020, celebration at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. The seventh grader submitted the winni...

NASA's Perseverance rover undergoes a 10-day test in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility's High Bay 1 at JPL. The image was taken on Nov. 16, 2019.

The spacecraft that will carry NASA's Perseverance rover to Mars is examined prior to an acoustic test in the Environmental Test Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Th...

Scientists from NASA's Mars 2020 mission and the European Space Agency-Roscosmos ExoMars mission are in the Australian Outback to hone research techniques before their missions launch to the Red Pl...

Attitude Control Systems lead Chris Pong donned a dinosaur-themed mask for his participation in the Mars 2020 mission’s second trajectory correction maneuver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in ...

Members of the NASA Mars Helicopter team inspect the flight model (the actual vehicle going to the Red Planet), inside the Space Simulator.

In time-lapse video bunny-suited engineers remove the inner layer of protective foil on NASA's Mars 2020 rover after it was moved to a different building at JPL for testing.

Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong works with an Apollo Lunar Sample Return Container during a lunar surface simulation training exercise in Building 9, Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas.

This image taken on Nov. 16, 2019, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, captures the port side of NASA's Perseverance rover.

Chile's Atacama Desert is the driest place on Earth -- and a ready analog for Mars' rugged, arid terrain.

This map of the Red Planet shows Jezero Crater, where NASA's Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to land in February 2021. Also included are the locations where all of NASA's other successful Mars mission...

Mars 2020 Lift Activities in Payload Hazardous Serviceing Facility (PHSF) at the Kennedy Space Center.

The heat shield (left) and back shell (right) that comprise the aeroshell for NASA's Mars 2020 mission are depicted in this image.

The flight model of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

Crazy Engineering explores a technology demonstration riding aboard NASA’s Mars 2020 rover that's straight out of science fiction novels like "The Martian."  It's an oxygen generator called MOXIE, ...

This illustration shows NASA’s Mars 2020 spacecraft carrying the Perseverance rover as it approaches Mars. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to la...

An engineer working on NASA's Mars 2020 mission uses a solar intensity probe to measure and compare the amount of artificial sunlight that reaches different portions of the rover.

Standing in for a rover, a field team sets up equipment in a dry lakebed in the Nevada desert in February 2020. 

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

An Ingenuity team member inspects NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in one of the space simulation chambers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

This illustration shows NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover on the surface of the Red Planet. 

A team of scientists and engineers gives proposals for NASA's 2020 Mars rover mission.

This illustration shows the events that occur in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month journey that NASA’s Perseverance rover takes to Mars.

This artist's sketch is based on the Curiosity rover in NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, with proposed modifications based on the science definition team's recommendations.