Mission Timeline

In this season 4 finale, Gentry Lee and Rob Manning reveal how surprises, hidden flaws, and uncertainties have always been a part of rovers and the exploration of Mars.

On June 21, 2019, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory install the main robotic arm on the Mars 2020 rover.

The Mars 2020 rover undergoes processing inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 14, 2020.

From launch to the journey to Mars to atmospheric entry to surviving on the Martian surface, NASA’s Perseverance rover will have to endure a lot of extreme environments on its way to the Red Planet.

This image was taken during the first drive of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars on March 4, 2021. Perseverance landed on Feb. 18, 2021, and the team has been spending the weeks since landing check...

This annotated image of Mars’ Jezero Crater depicts the location of NASA’s Perseverance rover (yellow dot) and the field of view of its Remote Microscopic Imager (RMI) camera when it took a series ...

Ingenuity sits on a slightly inclined surface with about 6-degree tilt at the center of the frame, just north of the southern ridge of “Séíitah” geologic unit. The Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z in...

This is an illustration of the aluminum plate with the United States flag that is mounted on the Mars Perseverance rover. This plate is located at the base of Perseverance’s remote sensing mast.

NASA is inviting the public to help get ready for the upcoming launch of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover by joining a global, collective #CountdownToMars.

NASA's upcoming Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission will collect the first samples from another planet (the red one) for return to Earth by subsequent missions.

This graphic shows the general activities the team behind NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter hopes to accomplish on a given test flight on the Red Planet.

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars helicopter is preparing to deploy the helicopter to the surface of the Red Planet. This video provides a mission update from Farah Alibay, Per...

The Mars 2020 mission is facing the most challenging landing yet on the Red Planet. It will touch down on Feb. 18, 2021, in Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) expanse full of steep c...

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter takes off and lands in this video captured on April 25, 2021, by Mastcam-Z, an imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. 

Another view of NASA's Perseverance rover attached to a spin table during a test of its mass properties at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The image was taken on April 7, 2020.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30. NASA's Eyes on the Solar System tool lets you track the spacecraft in real time as it makes its way to Mars f...

This animated GIF shows a successful test of the parachute that will be used to land NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars. The images were taken on Sept. 7, 2018, during the third and final flight of ...

At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover was prepared for encapsulation in the United Launch Alliance Atlas V payload fairing on June 18, 2020. 

This illustration shows NASA’s Mars 2020 spacecraft carrying the Perseverance rover as it approaches Mars. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to la...

Members of JPL's assembly, test and launch operations team for NASA's Perseverance mission show appreciation for their newly named rover. The image was taken on March 4, 2020, at a payload processi...

Twenty students, along with parents, teachers, and classmates, met virtually with NASA Mars Perseverance team members to celebrate the students' participation in the "You've Got Perseverance" campa...

This Sept. 1 image from NASA's Perseverance rover shows a sample tube with its cored-rock contents inside. 

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took this color image during its fourth flight on April 30, 2021. “Airfield B,” it’s new landing site, can be seen below; it will seek to set down there on its fift...

An artist's concept of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flying through the Red Planet's skies.

This image of Ingenuity was taken on May 23, 2021 – the day after its sixth flight – by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard the Perseverance Mars rover.