Mars 2020

 

 Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover Perseverance and the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity. The rover was launched on July 30th 2020, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and travelled 293 million miles over a period of 203 days. It weighs 2,263-pounds and is around the size of a car.

Mars 2020 was launched from Earth on an Atlas V launch vehicle at 11:50:00 UTC on 30 July 2020 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and travelled 293 million miles over a period of 203 days. It weighs 2,263-pounds and is around the size of a car. and confirmation of touch down in Jezero crater on Mars was received at 20:55 UTC on 18 February 2021 On 5 March 2021. NASA named the landing site of the rover Octavia E. Butler Landing. As of 9 March 2021, Perseverance has been on Mars for 18 sols (19 total days; 19 days). 

Perseverance will investigate an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars and investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. The Mars 2020 mission was announced by NASA on 4 December 2012 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.[8] Perseverance's design is derived from the rover Curiosity, and it uses many components already fabricated and tested in addition to new scientific instruments and a core drill. The rover also employs 19 cameras and two microphones, allowing for audio recording of the Martian environment.

The launch of Mars 2020 was the third of three space missions sent toward Mars during the July 2020 Mars launch window, with missions also launched by the national space agencies of the United Arab Emirates (the Emirates Mars Mission with the orbiter Hope on 19 July) and China (the Tianwen-1 mission on 23 July, with an orbiter, lander, and rover).

It will also help to pave the way for future human expeditions to Mars by testing a method for producing oxygen, identifying other resources such as subsurface water, improving landing techniques, and characterising weather, dust, and other environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.