NASA to Launch Mars Rover in 2020

A close-up view of the single-engine Centaur upper stage for the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.

Students Alex Mather, at left, and Vaneeza Rupani, stand near the countdown clock at the News Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 28, 2020. Mather named the Perseverance rover,...

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.

In this August 5, 2019 image, the bit carousel - the heart of sampling and caching subsystem of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission -  is attached to the front end of the rover.

Technicians working on the Mars 2020 rover at JPL install the rover motor controller assembly, the electrical heart of the rover's mobility and motion systems.

In this image, taken on Aug. 5, 2019, engineers at NASA's JPL  lift the Mars 2020 rover's bit carousel from its storage container. The bit carousel is at the heart of the rover's Sample Caching Sys...

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took this image with its color camera from beneath the Perseverance rover after the rover had deployed the rotorcraft to the surface of Mars. Image was taken on April ...

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was able to capture this image of the final location of the parachute that helped slow down NASA’s Perseverance rover during its landing ...

Sending a rover to the Red Planet is more than just 3, 2, 1, liftoff! It takes 1,000s of people and years of hard work to get from Earth to Mars.

An engineering model of NASA's Mars 2020 rover makes tracks during a driving test in the Mars Yard, an area that simulates Mars-like conditions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Cali...

This illustration depicts the interior of a sample tube being carried aboard the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.

Perseverance scientist Olivia Sun was excited to see certain geologic features in imagery of Jezero Crater’s “Delta Scarp” because they provide evidence of a watery past.

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 used here on Earth for testing a laser instrument for NAS...

MEDLI2 sensors are installed on the Mars 2020 heat shield and back shell prior that will protect NASA's Perseverance rover on its journey to the surface of Mars. 

An engineering model of SHERLOC, one the instruments onboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. Located on the end of the rover's robotic arm, SHERLOC will help determine which samples to take so that...

MOXIE Functional Block Diagram

The SuperCam calibration target is visible in this image, taken in the clean room at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, at Cape Canaveral, Florida on April 22, 2020. 

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter can be seen here taking off, hovering and then landing on the Martian surface on April 19, 2021. The Mastcam-Z imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shot video of...

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter spotted this location, nicknamed “Raised Ridges,” during its ninth flight, on July 5. Scientists hope to visit “Raised Ridges” with the Perseverance rover in the fu...

This simulation shows the motions the robotic arm on NASA’s Perseverance rover carried out during its first two-hour checkout on Mars. This simulation does not run in real-time.

About 1000 Viking Orbiter red- and violet-filter images have been processed to provide global color coverage of Mars at a scale of 1 km/pixel.

When NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attempts its first test flight on the Red Planet, the agency's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will be close by, as seen in this artist's concept.

To get ready for the launch of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, NASA invited the public to join a global, collective #CountdownToMars project.

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

The first stage of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V that will carry NASA's Perseverance rover into space is offloaded from an Antonov cargo plane at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 11, 2020.