Mission Timeline

One of two wind sensors springs out of the mast on NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. These sensors are part of Perseverance's weather instrumentation, called MEDA.

The nose cone containing the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover sits atop a motorized payload transporter at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 7, 2020.

This close-up view of a rock target named "Dourbes" was provided by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the end of the robotic arm aboard NASA’s Pers...

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover carries two commercial-grade microphones, including this one on its mast. The mast microphone is part of the SuperCam instrument.

In this image, taken on June 1, 2019, an engineer in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility's High Bay 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, works on the exposed belly of the Mar...

The Range Trigger technique shrinks the Mars 2020 rovers landing ellipse significantly, landing the rover closer to the target area of greatest scientific interest. This example shows Mars 2020's e...

This map shows the approximate flight path of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its ninth flight, on July 5.

A seven-person field team served as a simulated rover, carrying cameras and science instruments to the Nevada desert. Meanwhile, mission scientists at institutions like  NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labor...

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter can be seen on the belly of the Perseverance rover, ready to be dropped off at the helicopter’s deployment location. 

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. 

This GIF shows the order in which the 142 images that makeup the Mastcam-Z’s first 360-degree panorama were taken. Mastcam-Z is a pair of zoomable cameras on the mast, or “head,” of NASA’s Persever...

NASA's Mars 2020 Project will re-use the basic engineering of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity to send a different rover to Mars, with new objectives and instruments. This view depicts the ...

Meet two of the Martian samples that have been collected and are awaiting return to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. As of early August 2023, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has col...

A member of a science field team operates a subsurface radar in the Nevada desert in February 2020 as part of a practice exercise that lasted several days. The field team stood in for NASA's Persev...

A device with six mechanical legs, the hexapod is a critical part of the PIXL instrument aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. The hexapod allows PIXL to make slow, precise movements to get closer...

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover carries two commercial-grade microphones, including this one on its chassis.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is traveling to Mars attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover and must safely detach to begin the first attempt at powered flight on another planet. Tests done at...

This image shows the remains of an ancient delta in Mars' Jezero Crater, which NASA's Perseverance Mars rover will explore for signs of fossilized microbial life. The image was taken by the High Re...

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

Illustration depicts Mars Helicopter Ingenuity during a test flight on Mars. Ingenuity was taken to the Red Planet strapped to the belly of the Perseverance rover (seen in the background).  

This is the third color image taken by NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter. It was snapped on the helicopter’s second flight, April 22, 2021, from an altitude of about 17 feet (5.2 meters). Tracks made by ...

This illustration depicts the mechanism and conceptual research targets for an instrument named Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, or SHERLOC.

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 ...

Taken Sept. 1 by Mastcam-Z after Perseverance's sample-coring activities, this image shows the rover's drill with no cored rock sample evident in the sample tube.

Before NASA's Mars Perseverance rover landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, the entry, descent, and landing team posed at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California with individual ba...