Perseverance (Mars 2020)

Mission Profile

Prime Contractors

Companies that built, launched, or operate this mission. Tickers link to their investor profile.

• NASA JPL
• LMTLockheed Martin
• United Launch Alliance
• Malin Space Science Systems
• Honeybee Robotics

Overview

Perseverance is NASA's most sophisticated Mars rover and the centerpiece of the agency's astrobiology campaign on the red planet. Launched in July 2020 and landed in Jezero Crater on 18 February 2021, the car-sized rover is exploring an ancient lake bed and river delta that preserved sediments from a time when Mars had liquid surface water roughly 3.5 billion years ago. Perseverance carries seven science instruments including SHERLOC and PIXL on its robotic arm for fine-scale mineralogy, the SuperCam laser-induced breakdown spectrometer, the Mastcam-Z stereo zoom imager, and MOXIE — an in-situ resource demonstration that successfully produced oxygen from Mars's CO₂ atmosphere on multiple occasions. Critically, Perseverance is the first rover designed to cache samples for later return to Earth: it carries 43 sample tubes, of which approximately 30 have already been filled with rock cores and regolith and either stored aboard the rover or deposited at backup depots. The retrieval of those tubes is the responsibility of the Mars Sample Return campaign. Perseverance also delivered Ingenuity, the first aircraft to fly on another world, which completed 72 successful flights between April 2021 and January 2024 before a rotor blade was damaged in a hard landing.

Key Milestones

1. 2020-07-30

   Launch on Atlas V from Cape Canaveral SLC-41

2. 2021-02-18

   Successful landing in Jezero Crater

3. 2021-04-19

   Ingenuity first powered flight on Mars

4. 2021-04-20

   MOXIE demonstrates oxygen production from Martian CO₂

5. 2024-01-18

   Ingenuity's 72nd and final flight

6. 2025-09-01

   Perseverance reaches the Jezero crater rim ('Witch Hazel Hill' campaign)

Related Missions

Sources

1. NASA — Mars 2020 Perseverance
2. NASA — Ingenuity