Mission Timeline

In this image, taken on June 13, 2019, engineers prepare the starboard legs and wheels — otherwise known as the mobility suspension — for integration onto NASA's Mars 2020 rover.

This image looking west toward the Séítah geologic unit on Mars was taken from the height of 33 feet (10 meters) by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter during its sixth flight, on May 22, 2021. 

Taken Feb. 22, 2021, this image from the Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a target for analysis by the rover’s SuperCam instrument.

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.

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

Stitched together from multiple images, this mosaic of the Jezero Crater’s river delta was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on Apr. 17, 2021.

OPTIMISM faces a doorway of JPL’s Mars Yard garage shortly after arriving there on Oct. 29, 2021.

NASA’s rovers are putting their gears in drive on Mars, making discoveries along the way.

This annotated image of Mars’ Jezero Crater depicts the ground track and waypoints of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s planned 11th flight, scheduled to take place no earlier than Aug. 4, 2021.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission's disk-shaped cruise stage sits atop the back shell, which contains the powered descent stage and Perseverance rover. The brass-colored heat shield below is...

This is the first Mars flight hardware that has been designed, assembled & tested at NASA-Johnson Space Center, led by Jacobs/JETS Chief Scientist Trevor Graff.

Members of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter team in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory prepare to receive the data downlink showing whether the helicopter completed...

Will Allen with engineering models of the (clockwise from bottom) Sojourner rover, a Mars Exploration Rover, and Curiosity in JPL's Mars Yard in the early 2000s.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took these images on its fourth flight, on April 30, 2021, using its navigation camera. The camera, which tracks surface features below the helicopter, takes images...

Peer over the shoulders of our engineers as they build hardware for NASA's Mars 2020 mission. 

Top center: The plate on the aft crossbeam of NASA's Mars Perseverance rover — seen here on March 16, 2020, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center— carries 10,932,295 names submitted by people during NASA'...

Taken on Aug. 17, 2022, the 531st Martian day, or sol, of the mission shows the back of Coring Bit 2 in the bit carousel NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. A wavy, stringlike piece of foreign object d...

Since landing in February 2021, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has sent back hundreds of thousands of images of the Red Planet. After each communication downlink, images go directly to the Persever...

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with NASA's Mars 2020 mission with the Perseverance rover rolls from the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex-...

This image from one of the rear Hazard Cameras, or Hazcams, aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, shows a smoke plume from the crashed descent stage that lowered the rover to the Martian surface. 

Antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network provide two-way communications with spacecraft exploring the planets.

This GIF shows NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collecting two samples of regolith – broken rock and dust – with a regolith sampling bit on the end of its robotic arm. The samples were collected on D...

The helicopter was tested on a stand while the cruise stage was tested on the rotation fixture.

This annotated image from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shows how its SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Minerals) instrument investigates a rock...

Ian Clark walks past mission countdown clocks in the Perseverance offices at JPL. Clark was needed on-Lab to supervise the assembly and cleaning of the sample tubes that will hold Martian sediment ...