NASA · rover active
Perseverance (Mars 2020)
NASA's Perseverance rover explores Jezero Crater on Mars, searching for signs of ancient life and caching rock samples.
- Launch
- 30 July 2020
- Distance from Earth today
- 213.1 million km1.424 AU · light: 11 min 51 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 238.7 million km1.595 AU
The spacecraft is at Mars.
Trajectory
Trajectory: JPL Horizons vectors (spacecraft -168) every 1 days, projected onto the ecliptic; compressed distance scale.
Mission timeline
- Launch on an Atlas V from Cape Canaveral
- Landing in Jezero Crater
- Ingenuity makes the first powered flight on another planet
- First rock core sealed in a sample tube
- Ingenuity's final flight damages its rotors
Targets: Mars
About the mission
Perseverance landed on 18 February 2021 in Jezero Crater, which once held a lake fed by a river delta. Larger and better equipped than Curiosity, it drills rock cores and seals them in tubes for a possible future return to Earth, and it tested the production of oxygen from the Martian air. It also carried Ingenuity, a small helicopter that made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet and went on to fly 72 times. The rover has since climbed out of the crater onto its rim to study some of the oldest rocks it can reach.
Landing sites
Texture: Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0) · names: IAU/USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature
| Body | Site | Date | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mars | Octavia E. Butler Landing, Jezero Crater | 18 February 2021 | 18.445° N, 77.451° E |
Sources
- science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/
- nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=2020-052A
- ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/api/horizons.api?format=text&COMMAND=%27-168%27&OBJ_DATA=%27YES%27&MAKE_EPHEM=%27NO%27
- mars.nasa.gov/mmgis-maps/M20/Layers/json/M20_waypoints.json
- Trajectory: JPL Horizons (public domain)