The largest, most advanced rover NASA has sent to another world touched down on Mars on February 18, 2021 (US Time), after a 203-day journey traversing 293 million miles (472 million kilometers).
- The Mars 2020 mission was launched July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
- The Perseverance rover mission marks an ambitious first step in the effort to collect Mars samples and return them to Earth.
- About the size of a car, the 2,263-pound (1,026-kilogram) robotic geologist and astrobiologist will undergo several weeks of testing before it begins its two-year science investigation of Mars’ Jezero Crater.
- Jezero is thought to have held a giant lake billions of years ago. And where there’s been water, there’s the possibility there might also have been life.
- Jezero Crater sits on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator.
(Source: NASA)
