Perseverance
What is Perseverance?
Probes & telescopes· Launched 2020-07-30 – landed 2021-02-18 (5th year on Mars). NASA's Mars rover hunting for signs of ancient life in Jezero crater, a former lake. Since landing in February 2021 it has sealed rock cores from a river delta into sample tubes, and its helicopter Ingenuity made the first powered flight on another world. Replay the Earth–Mars transfer in the orbit view.
The orbit of Perseverance at this moment: https://nowsky.org/solar/orbit?fw=probe%3Aperseverance&sp=2.6 — replayed live, no login.
Mission timeline
Spacecraft specs
| Launch | 2020-07-30 |
|---|---|
| Landing | Jezero crater |
| Mass | 1,025 kg |
| Companion | Ingenuity helicopter, 72 flights |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When did Perseverance launch?
- 2020-07-30.
- What is the mass of Perseverance?
- 1,025 kg.
- In one line, what is Perseverance?
- Probes & telescopes — NASA's Mars rover hunting for signs of ancient life in Jezero crater, a former lake.
Three Forks, the sample depot left on Mars
Between December 2022 and January 2023 Perseverance set down ten sample tubes on a flat patch of Jezero's floor called Three Forks — a backup depot in case the rover fails. The tubes lie in a zigzag 5 to 15 metres apart so that a retrieval helicopter or rover can pick each one up without disturbing the others, and the position of every tube is recorded from orbital imagery to the centimetre.
The rover carries twin tubes of the same samples, so the plan is for it to deliver them to a retrieval craft itself; the depot is insurance. One tube holds a sample of the atmosphere and one is a "witness tube", left empty to measure contamination from the rover. With the sample-return plan under review since 2024, when these tubes reach Earth is undecided, but ten tubes at exact coordinates on the surface of Mars are already waiting.
The mission in depth
Perseverance is NASA's car-sized rover, launched on 30 July 2020 on an Atlas V and landed in Jezero crater on 18 February 2021. Built on the Curiosity chassis with new wheels and seven instruments, it was the first landing filmed in full as the sky crane lowered the rover on cables. Jezero was a lake 3.5 billion years ago, and the river delta that fed it is still there in layered rock.
Its central job is caching. The rover drills rock cores, seals them in tubes and either drops them on the surface or carries them, ready for a future Mars Sample Return campaign to bring home. In April 2021 the Ingenuity helicopter made the first powered flight on another planet; planned for five flights, it flew 72 before a broken rotor ended its career in January 2024. The MOXIE experiment also produced oxygen from the carbon-dioxide atmosphere.
Track Perseverance in the orbit view to see the seven-month transfer from launch in July 2020 to landing in February 2021. Move the date to launch and note how Earth, on the inner track, runs ahead of Mars. China's Tianwen-1 and the UAE's Hope used the same launch window and reached Mars at the same time.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.