Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover

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The Mars 2020 mission with its Perseverance rover is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key Astrobiology questions about the potential for life on Mars.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will investigate a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life, probing the Martian rocks for evidence of past life. Throughout its investigation, it will collect samples of soil and rock, and cache them on the surface for potential return to Earth by a future mission.

Perseverance will carry an entirely new subsystem to collect and prepare Martian rocks and soil samples that includes a coring drill on its arm and a rack of sample tubes. About 30 of these sample tubes will be deposited at select locations for return on a potential future sample-retrieval mission. In laboratories on Earth, specimens from Mars could be analyzed for evidence of past life on Mars and possible health hazards for future human missions.

Two science instruments mounted on the rover's robotic arm will be used to search for signs of past life and determine where to collect samples by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of Martian rocks. On the rover's mast, two science instruments will provide high-resolution imaging and three types of spectroscopy for characterizing rocks and soil from a distance, also helping to determine which rock targets to explore up close.

The Perseverance rover will use the same sky crane landing system as Curiosity, but will have the ability to land in more challenging terrain with two enhancements, making more rugged sites eligible as safe landing candidates.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Curiosity rover on Mars

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NASA's Curiosity rover took this selfie on the 2,553rd Martian day, or sol, of its mission. The rover drilled twice in this location, nicknamed "Glen Etive" (pronounced "glen EH-tiv"). About 300 meters (984 feet) behind the rover, Vera Rubin Ridge rises up. Behind it lies the floor of Gale Crater, which Curiosity is exploring, and the northern rim of the crater.

Just left of the rover are the two drill holes, called "Glen Etive 1" (right) and "Glen Etive 2" (left). Curiosity performed its first wet-chemistry experiment on a drilled sample at this location. The rover can analyze the chemical composition of rock samples by powderizing them with the drill, then dropping the samples into a portable lab in its belly called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM).

This panorama is made up of 57 individual images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm. The images are stitched together into a panorama; the robotic arm isn't visible in the parts of the images used in the composite.

MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. The SAM instrument suite was built at Goddard Space Flight Center with significant elements provided by industry, university, and national and international NASA partners. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Victoria Crater on Mars as seen by the MRO spacecraft

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This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Victoria Crater, an impact crater at Meridiani Planum, near the equator of Mars. The crater is approximately 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter. It has a distinctive scalloped shape to its rim, caused by erosion and downhill movement of crater wall material. Layered sedimentary rocks are exposed along the inner wall of the crater, and boulders that have fallen from the crater wall are visible on the crater floor. The floor of the crater is occupied by a striking field of sand dunes. Since January 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been operating at Meridiani Planum. Five days before this image was taken, Opportunity arrived at the rim of Victoria crater, after a drive of more than 9 kilometers (over 5 miles). The rover can be seen in this image, at roughly the "ten o'clock" position along the rim of the crater.
This view is a portion of an image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on Oct. 3, 2006. The complete image is centered at minus7.8 degrees latitude, 279.5 degrees East longitude. The range to the target site was 297 kilometers (185.6 miles). At this distance the image scale is 29.7 centimeters (12 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning) so objects about 89 centimeters (35 inches) across are resolved. The image shown here has been map-projected to 25 centimeters (10 inches) per pixel and north is up. The image was taken at a local Mars time of 3:30 PM and the scene is illuminated from the west with a solar incidence angle of 59.7 degrees, thus the sun was about 30.3 degrees above the horizon. At a solar longitude of 113.6 degrees, the season on Mars is northern summer. This is an enhanced-color view generated from images acquired by theHiRISE camera using its red filter and blue-green filter.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/Ohio State University

Mars Rover view of West Rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars

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A portion of the west rim of Endeavour crater sweeps southward in this color view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. This crater - with a diameter of about 14 miles (22 kilometers) - is more than 25 times wider than any that Opportunity has previously approached during the rover's 90 months on Mars. This view combines exposures taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) on the 2,678th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Aug. 6, 2011) before driving on that sol. The subsequent Sol 2678 drive covered 246 feet (75.26 meters), more than half of the remaining distance to the rim of the crater. Opportunity arrived at the rim during its next drive, on Sol 2681 (Aug. 9, 2011). Endeavour crater has been the rover team's destination for Opportunity since the rover finished exploring Victoria crater in August 2008. Endeavour offers access to older geological deposits than any Opportunity has seen before. The closest of the distant ridges visible along the Endeavour rim is informally named "Solander Point." Opportunity may investigate that area in the future. The rover's first destination on the rim, called "Spirit Point" in tribute to Opportunity's now-inactive twin, Spirit, is to the left (north) of this scene. The lighter-toned rocks closer to the rover in this view are similar to the rocks Opportunity has driven over for most of the mission. However, the darker-toned and rougher rocks just beyond that might be a different type for Opportunity to investigate. The ground in the foreground is covered with iron-rich spherules, nicknamed "blueberries," which Opportunity has observed frequently since the first days after landing. They are about 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) or more in diameter. This view combines images taken through three different Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). This "natural color" is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it with their own eyes. Seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see.
The full resolution image weighs 1.78 MB, so please be (a little) patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU

Artist's rendering of the MPCV on a Manned Mission to Mars

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Artist's rendering of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on a deep space manned mission to Mars.
The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) is based on the Orion design requirements for traveling beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The MPCV will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.
- Spacecraft to serve as the primary crew vehicle for missions beyond LEO, like Moon or Mars Manned missions.
- Capable of conducting regular in-space operations (rendezvous, docking, extravehicular activity) in conjunction with payloads delivered by SLS for missions beyond LEO.
- Capability to be a backup system for ISS cargo and crew delivery.
Drawing from more than 50 years of spaceflight research and development, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) is designed to meet the evolving needs of our nation's space program for decades to come.
As the flagship of our nation's next-generation space fleet, the MPCV will push the envelope of human spaceflight far beyond low Earth orbit. The MPCV may resemble its Apollo-era predecessors, but its technology and capability are light years apart. The MPCV features dozens of technology advancements and innovations that have been incorporated into the spacecraft's subsystem and component design. To support long-duration deep space missions of up to six months, NASA engineers are developing a state-of-the-art spacecraft. The MPCV's unique life support, propulsion, thermal protection and avionics systems will enable integration of new technical innovations in the future. Building upon the best of human spaceflight design and experience, the MPCV spacecraft includes both crew and service modules, a spacecraft adaptor, and a revolutionary launch abort system that will significantly increase crew safety. The MPCV's crew module is much larger than Apollo's and can support more crew members for short or long-duration spaceflight missions. The service module is the powerhouse that fuels and propels the spacecraft as well as the storehouse for the life-sustaining air and water astronauts need during their space travels. The service module's structure will also provide places to mount scientific experiments and cargo. The MPCV is capable of transporting astronauts on a variety of expeditions beyond low Earth orbit - ushering in a new era of space exploration.
Credit: NASA
Image Credit: John Frassanito & Associates

Martian Freedom 7 Crater 50 Years After Freedom 7 Flight

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NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded this view of a crater informally named "Freedom 7" shortly before the 50th anniversary of the first American in space: astronaut Alan Shepard's flight in the Freedom 7 spacecraft. The image combines two frames that Opportunity took with its navigation camera during the 2,585th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (May 2, 2011). Shepard's suborbital flight lasted 15 minutes on May 5, 1961. The crater is about 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. It is the largest of a cluster of about eight craters all formed just after an impactor broke apart in the Martian atmosphere. By taking advantage of seeing many craters of diverse ages during drives between major destinations, the Opportunity mission is documenting how impact craters change with time. The cluster that includes Freedom 7 crater formed after sand ripples in the area last migrated, which is estimated to be about 200,000 years ago.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars Global Surveyor MOC view of Martian Weather Patterns

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Twelve orbits a day provide the Mars Global Surveyor MOC wide angle cameras a global "snapshot" of weather patterns across the planet. Here, bluish-white water ice clouds hang above the Tharsis volcanoes. The center of this newly projected sphere is located at 15degrees North, 90 degrees West. This perspective rotates the south pole (which has no data coverage in the original map) away from our field of view.
Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission.
The full resolution image weighs 1.54 MB, so please be (a little) patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

The Challenger Memorial Station at Meridiani Planum on Mars

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This image taken by the panoramic camera aboard the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the rover's empty lander, the Challenger Memorial Station, at Meridiani Planum, Mars. The image was acquired on the rover's 24 sol, or Martian day. This mosaic image consists of 12 color images acquired with the camera's red, green and blue filters. The color balance has been set to approximate the colors that a human eye would see. Opportunity is celebrating its seventh anniversary on the Red Planet, having landed on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 24, Pacific Time), for what was to be a 90-day mission.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is studying Santa Maria crater

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NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending the seventh anniversary of its landing on Mars investigating a crater called "Santa Maria," which has a diameter about the length of a football field.
This scene looks eastward across the crater. Portions of the rim of a much larger crater, Endurance, appear on the horizon. The panorama spans 125 compass degrees, from north-northwest on the left to south-southwest on the right. It has been assembled from multiple frames taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity during the 2,453rd and 2,454th Martian days, or sols, of the rover's work on Mars (Dec. 18 and 19, 2010).
Opportunity landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 24, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 25, Pacific Time) for a mission originally planned to last for three months. Since that prime mission, the rover has continued to work in bonus-time extended missions. Both Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.
By mid-January 2011, Opportunity reached a location at the southeastern edge of Santa Maria crater. The rover team developed plans for Opportunity to spend a few weeks investigating rocks at that site during solar conjunction, a period when communications between Earth and Mars are curtailed because the sun is almost directly between the two planets.
After completion of its work at Santa Maria, the rover will resume a long-term trek toward Endeavour.
This view combines images taken through three different Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). This "natural color" is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if we were there and able to see it with our own eyes. Seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see. The full panorama image weighs 4.1 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU

Martian crater Schiaparelli with low Sun

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The Schiaparelli Crater is an impact crater on Mars named after Giovanni Schiaparelli located near Mars' equator. It is 461 km in diameter and located at latitude 3° South and longitude 344°. A crater within Schiaparelli shows many layers that may have formed by the wind, volcanoes, or deposition under water.
Layers can be a few meters thick or tens of meters think. Recent research on these layers by scientists at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggest that ancient climate change on Mars caused by regular variation in the planet's tilt, may have caused the patterns in layers. On Earth, similar changes (astronomical forcing) of climate results in ice-age cycles.
Like the rendering below, this image was made mainly with the digital elevation models of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and rendered with 3DEM data converter and Terragen 2 software.
Credit: Kees Veenenbos

The Martian volcano Olympus Mons seen from the Lycus Sulci

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This is an awesome rendering of the volcano Olympus Mons seen from the Lycus Sulci. This image was made mainly with the digital elevation models of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and rendered with 3DEM data converter and Terragen 2 software.
Olympus Mons is a volcanic mountain on Mars. It is a little under three times as tall as Mount Everest and is the tallest known volcano in the Solar System. Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large volcanoes on Mars, having formed during Mars' Amazonian Period. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, similar in morphology to the large volcanoes making up the Hawaiian Islands. The volcano is about 600 km wide and stands nearly 22 km above the surrounding plains - a little over twice the height of Mauna Kea as measured from its base on the Pacific ocean floor! The summit of the mountain has six nested calderas (collapse craters) forming an irregular depression 72 x 91 km across and up to 3.2 km deep. The volcano's outer edge consists of an escarpment, or cliff, up to 8 km tall, a feature unique among the shield volcanoes of Mars. Olympus Mons covers an area approximately the size of Arizona.
Credit: Kees Veenenbos

NASA's vision of manned Mars exploration: more than a dream?

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In this artist's concept of a future Mars mission, two explorers stop to inspect a robotic lander and its small rover after driving a short distance from their landing site. This stop also allows the crew to check out the life support systems of their rover and space suits within walking distance of the base.
The Vision for Space Exploration calls for NASA to return to the Moon and eventually explore Mars and beyond.
The full resolution image weighs 6.6 MB, so please be patient when downloading!
Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings, SAIC

On Jan. 4, 2004, the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover landed on Mars

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On Jan. 4, 2004, Spirit - the first of two NASA Mars Exploration Rovers - landed on the Red Planet for what was to be a 90-day mission. This image, acquired on sol 127 (May 12, 2004), shows the path the rover traveled on its way to the base of the "Columbia Hills". The hills can be seen silhouetted against the horizon on the far left side.
Since sol 2210 (March 22, 2010), Spirit has been silent, and the project's scientists continue to listen for Spirit with the Deep Space Network and Mars Odyssey orbiter. The project is also conducting a paging technique called "Sweep & Beep" to stimulate the rover. Since the period of peak solar activity occurs in mid-March 2011, leaving Spirit plenty of occasion to respond. Spirit's sister spacecraft Opportunity continues to explore Mars, arriving in December 2010 at the 80-meter (262-foot) diameter Santa Maria crater on its journey to Endeavour crater.
Credit: NASA

Bacolor Crater as viewed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter

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Bacolor Crater is a magnificent impact feature about 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide. The lines on the ejecta blanket surrounding the crater rim come from a surge of superheated gas and debris flying outward in the wake of the meteorite impact that made the crater.
This view combines images taken during the period from September 2002 to October 2005 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. It is part of a special set of images marking the occasion of Odyssey becoming the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history. The pictured location on Mars is 33 degrees north latitude, 118.6 degrees east longitude.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Mars Express: wind and water have shaped Schiaparelli on Mars!

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This ultra high resolution image of Schiaparelli on Mars shows just a small part of the crater's north-western rim cutting diagonally across the image (top left to bottom right) and a smaller 42-kilometer diameter crater embedded in its rim. Schiaparelli is a large impact basin about 460 kilometres across, located in the eastern Terra Meridiani region on Mars's equator. The image is centred on the equator of Mars, at a longitude of about 14°E. The DLR-operated High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA's Mars Express spacecraft acquired the image on 15 July 2010. The spacecraft was completing orbit 8363 of Mars and the ground resolution of the image is about 19 metres per pixel. All around is evidence of water in the past and the strong Martian winds that blow periodically.
The scene shows a small part of the north-western area of the Schiaparelli basin with the crater rim, the crater interior and parts of the surrounding highlands. Evidence for water can be seen in the form of dark sediments that appear on the floor of Schiaparelli, resembling those deposited by evaporated lakes on Earth.
The interior of Schiaparelli has been modified by multiple geological processes, including the fall of ejecta blasted upwards by the initial impact, flows of lava that created the smooth plains and deposition of watery sediments.
The High-Resolution Stereo Camera, HRSC, on the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission is led by the Principal Investigator (PI) Prof. Dr Gerhard Neukum, who was also responsible for the technical design of the camera. The science team of the experiment consists of 45 co-investigators from 32 institutions and 10 nations. The camera was developed at the German Aerospace Center, DLR, under the leadership of the PI and it was built in cooperation with industrial partners EADS Astrium, Lewicki Microelectronic GmbH and Jena-Optronik GmbH. The instrument on Mars Express is operated by the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, through ESA/ESOC. The systematic processing of the HRSC image data is carried out at DLR. The scenes shown here were processed by the PI-group at the Institute for Geosciences of the Freie Universitat Berlin in cooperation with the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

NASA's long-lasting Mars Odyssey orbiter shoots Udzha Crater

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Although it is 45 kilometers (28 miles) wide, countless layers of ice and dust have all but buried Udzha Crater. Udzha lies near the edge of the northern polar cap, and only the topmost edges of its crater rim rise above the polar deposits to hint at its circular shape.
The image was taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and posted in a special December 2010 set marking the occasion of Odyssey becoming the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history. The pictured location on Mars is 81.8 degrees north latitude, 77.2 degrees east longitude.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Does this Martian crater reveal the existence of Liquid Water?

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This image shows a fresh, approximately 7.5 kilometer diameter crater that resides in a larger crater in the Southern hemisphere of Mars.
The crater shown here has very few craters superposed on it, which attests to its youth. It also has very steep slopes and a sharp rim; more evidence of its young age. Young, fresh craters are of interest on Mars because they help place constraints on the rate at which new impact craters and other young features have formed in recent times.
This fresh crater is particularly interesting because it contains gullies. Gullies are slope features that are proposed to require some amount of liquid water to form. The gullies must have formed after the crater did, which means that if liquid water was involved in the formation of these gullies, then it existed on the surface of Mars more recently. The existence of recent liquid water is especially important in terms of the search for life on Mars and its future exploration.
Several of the gullies show features such as terraces, discontinuous channels, and abandoned channels; all of which imply that more than one flow event occurred. It is unknown whether or not such multiple flows would have been closely spaced in time.
Terraces are thought to indicate past flow levels. Discontinuous channels may represent some subsurface flow in addition to surface flow, or they may be channels that were once continuous that have since been filled in with wind-blown sediment and dust. The latter is the most likely in the subimage. For example, see the discontinuous channel near the center; it appears to have sediment infilling it. Abandoned channels are paths that fluid flowed through in the past before another flow took a different direction.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image showing an old ridge on Mars

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This Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image shows a ridge in Mars' Terra Meridiani that is most likely a former streambed, now exposed in inverted relief. The stream that formed this ridge must have been ancient as the ridge is buried by brighter rocks, which are themselves very old, having been thickly deposited and then heavily eroded.
The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed in the same region of Mars, and the rocks it has examined are likely part of a sequence similar to that exposed here. The rocks exposed at the Opportunity landing site are mostly wind-deposited sandstone, but show evidence of past water, reaching the surface at times. Opportunity has access to only a few meters of a stack of sediments that is hundreds of meters thick.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona