Blog: First Image From Perseverance on Mars

This is the first image NASA’s Perseverance rover sent back
This is the first image NASA’s Perseverance rover sent back after touching down on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. The view, from one of Perseverance’s Hazard Cameras, is partially obscured by a dust cover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has sent back its first image(s) from the surface of the Red Planet. The image(s) come from Perseverance’s Hazard Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams), which help with driving. The clear protective covers over these cameras are still on. These first images are low-resolution versions known as “thumbnails.” Higher-resolution versions will be available later. 

The latest spacecraft news can be found on the mission update page, and more details about landing are forthcoming. A post-landing briefing is expected at 5:30 p.m. EST (2:30 p.m. PST) on NASA TV and YouTube.

Blog: Entry, Descent, and Landing Team Takes Over

In this illustration of its descent to Mars, the spacecraft containing NASA’s Perseverance rover slows down using the drag generated by its motion in the Martian atmosphere. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to land on Mars safely on Feb. 18, 2021. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The team of engineers that piloted NASA’s Mars 2020 spacecraft, with the Perseverance rover and NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter inside, during the cruise from Earth to the Red Planet has handed over the reins to the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) team. 

The spacecraft is expected to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at around 3:48 p.m. EST (12:48 p.m. PST) and touch down at around 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST). Many engineers refer to the time it takes to land on Mars as the “seven minutes of terror.” Not only is the choreography of EDL complex, but the time delay involved in communicating with Earth means that the spacecraft has to accomplish this choreography all by itself.  

NASA is currently hosting live coverage of landing on NASA TV and YouTube. More information about how to watch these streams is on the mission’s watch online page. Share photos of you and your loved ones watching landing with the hashtag #CountdownToMars. 

The latest spacecraft status can be found on the mission update page

Blog: Perseverance Ready for Landing

This illustration shows NASA’s Perseverance rover casting off its spacecraft’s cruise stage, minutes before entering the Martian atmosphere. Hundreds of critical events in the rover’s Entry, Descent, and Landing sequence must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to touch down on Mars safely on Feb. 18, 2021. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Live coverage of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landing is about to start on NASA TV and YouTube. More information about how to watch these streams, which include a 360-degree view from inside mission control, is on the mission’s watch online page. Share photos of you and your loved ones watching landing with the hashtag #CountdownToMars. 

In the next several minutes, mission controllers are expected to turn off the transmitter sending commands to the spacecraft. At that time, they will have effectively taken their hands “off the wheel,” leaving Perseverance to complete the programmed landing sequence on its own. The spacecraft is expected to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at around 3:48 p.m. EST (12:48 p.m. PST) and touch down at around 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST). Perseverance will land with NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attached to its belly.  

Two NASA Mars orbiters will relay data on the Perseverance Mars rover landing back to Earth – the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft. They are part of the Mars Relay Network.

MRO is expected to relay detailed Perseverance engineering data to Earth in near-real-time. MAVEN will also be flying over Perseverance’s landing site around the same time, recording the same data as MRO. MAVEN, however, will only be able to transmit its data hours after the rover lands. Both orbiters send data back through the antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). 

Since the rover has preprogrammed landing instructions and significant autonomy, Perseverance can land safely on Mars without a communications link. There are additional scheduled playbacks of the data from MRO and MAVEN, as well as additional orbiter overflights, after landing, that can relay signals from the rover.

The latest spacecraft news can be found on the mission update page.

One Day Till Mars Landing

Empire State Building in New York
In anticipation of the targeted landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Feb. 18, 2021, the Empire State Building in New York began lighting its tower red on Tuesday, Feb. 16, starting at sunset.
Photo Credit: (NASA/Emma Howells)

NASAs Perseverance rover, with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attached to its belly, is on track to land on the Red Planet tomorrow, Feb. 18, 2021. Since launch, it has traveled over 291 million miles (468 million kilometers), and has about 1,260,000 miles (2,035,000 kilometers) left on its journey to Mars. Mission controllers expect to receive confirmation on Feb. 18 that it has hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at around 3:48 p.m. EST (12:48 p.m. PST) and touched down gently on the surface at around 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST). 

Watch live commentary of landing starting at 2:15 p.m. EST (11:15 a.m. PST)  on landing day on NASA TV. For more information about virtual landing livestreams, including details on a special livestream for students at 12:30 p.m. EST (9:30 a.m. PST), visit the missions watch online page. 

And be sure to keep your eyes peeled, because cities around the country are celebrating the landing by lighting the town red. The Empire State Building in New York began lighting its tower red on Tuesday, Feb. 16, starting at sunset, the Los Angeles International Airport gateway pylons will glow red from sundown beginning today, Wednesday, Feb. 17. Other sites in the United States recognizing the upcoming landing include select buildings along the Chicago skyline, such as the Adler Planetarium. 

The latest mission status can be found on the mission status page.

It’s Landing Week for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover

Illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover
In this illustration, NASA’s Perseverance rover gets its first look at the Martian surface below, after dropping its heat shield after entry into the Mars atmosphere. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to land safely on Feb. 18, 2021.

Some 201 days after launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Perseverance rover has just under three more days of “cruise” before its planned Feb. 18 landing at Mars’ Jezero Crater. As of Feb. 14, the rover had traveled over 288 million miles (464 million kilometers) of its 292.5-million-mile (470.8-million-kilometer) journey to the Red Planet. The spacecraft is about 124 million miles (about 200 million kilometers) from Earth and about 514,000 miles (827,000 kilometers) from Mars. The mission team reports spacecraft velocity is 64,123 mph (103,197 kph) relative to Earth, 5,750 mph (9,253 kph) relative to Mars, and 48,004 mph (77,255 kph) relative to the Sun. One-way light time – the time it takes for a signal to travel from Earth to the spacecraft – is 11 minutes, 2 seconds.

During the cruise phase of the mission (the time between launch and landing), engineers on Earth have been keeping close tabs on the spacecraft. Major activities during cruise have included:

  • Checking spacecraft health and maintenance
  • Monitoring and calibrating the spacecraft and its onboard subsystems and instruments
  • Performing attitude correction turns (slight spins to keep the antenna pointed toward Earth for communications and to keep the solar panels pointed toward the Sun for power)
  • Conducting navigation activities, such as trajectory correction maneuvers, to determine and correct the flight path before atmospheric entry.
  • Preparing for entry, descent, and landing (EDL) and surface operations, a process that includes tests of communications, including the communications to be used during EDL.

While Perseverance is getting ready to land this Thursday, Feb. 18, you can get ready, too! Use this toolkit to get the latest updates, download materials, and tune into programs as we get ready to #CountdownToMars. The first of many pre-landing news briefings begin Tuesday, Feb. 16, at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST). You can view the full schedule – including educational shows, news briefings, and landing-day commentary – at our “Watch Online” guide.

Mars 2020 Perseverance Exits Safe Mode, Successfully Heading to Mars

Flight controllers for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission have returned the spacecraft to nominal flight operations.

Launched on July 30 at 7:50 a.m. EDT (4:50 a.m. PDT), Mars 2020 entered a state called safe mode soon after it was placed on an interplanetary trajectory because a sensor indicated that part of the spacecraft was slightly colder than expected. When a spacecraft enters safe mode, all but essential systems are turned off until it receives new commands from mission control.

“With safe mode exit, the team is getting down to the business of interplanetary cruise,” said Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Next stop, Jezero Crater.”

Managed by JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA’s Artemis program.

 

Mars 2020 Perseverance Healthy and on Its Way

The team controlling NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has received telemetry (detailed spacecraft data) down from the spacecraft and has also been able to send commands up to the spacecraft, according to Matt Wallace, the mission’s deputy project manager. The team, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, has confirmed that the spacecraft is healthy and on its way to Mars.

Wallace provided a more detailed update on two issues during launch operations:

“First, the proximity of the spacecraft to Earth immediately after launch was saturating the ground station receivers of NASA’s Deep Space Network. This is a known issue that we have encountered on other planetary missions, including during the launch of NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2011. The Perseverance team worked through prepared mitigation strategies that included detuning the receivers and pointing the antennas slightly off-target from the spacecraft to bring the signal within an acceptable range. We are now in lock on telemetry after taking these actions.

“The second issue was a transient event involving temperature on the spacecraft. The mission uses a liquid freon loop to bring heat from the center of the spacecraft to radiators on the cruise stage (the part that helps fly the rover to Mars), which have a view to space. We monitor the difference in temperature between the warm inlet to the radiators and the cooler outlet from the radiators. As the spacecraft entered into Earth’s shadow, the Sun was temporary blocked by Earth, and the outlet temperature dropped. This caused the difference between the warm inlet and cooler outlet to increase. This transient differential tripped an alarm and caused the spacecraft to transition into the standby mode known as ‘safe mode.’

“Modeling by the team predicted something like this could happen during eclipse – the time when the spacecraft is in Earth’s shadow – but we could not create this exact environment for tests prior to launch. Nor did we have flight data from Curiosity, because its trajectory had no eclipse. We set the limits for the temperature differential conservatively tight for triggering a safe mode. The philosophy is that it is far better to trigger a safe mode event when not required, than miss one that is. Safe mode is a stable and acceptable mode for the spacecraft, and triggering safe mode during this transitional phase is not problematic for Mars 2020.

“With the understanding of the causes of these issues, we are conducting the operations necessary to move the spacecraft back out of safe mode and into normal cruise mode.”

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Ready for its Ride to Mars

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) payload fairing with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover secured inside is positioned on top of the ULA Atlas V rocket inside the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 7, 2020.
The United Launch Alliance (ULA) payload fairing with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover secured inside is positioned on top of the ULA Atlas V rocket inside the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 7, 2020. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is now attached to the rocket that will carry it on its seven-month journey to the Red Planet for the agency’s Mars 2020 mission.

On Tuesday, July 7, a team of engineers fastened the payload fairing, containing the rover and remainder of the spacecraft – the aeroshell backshell, descent stage and cruise stage – to a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V booster inside the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida. The rocket’s upper stage and spacecraft will remain attached until about 55 minutes after launch, after which the two will separate, sending Perseverance on its solo journey to Mars.

With the spacecraft and booster now connected, final testing of the two – separately and together as one unit – can begin. Once those tests are complete, the rocket will leave the VIF on the morning of July 28 for its journey to the launch pad – just 1,800 feet away.

NASA and United Launch Alliance are now targeting Thurs., July 30, at 7:50 a.m. ET, with a two-hour window, for launch of the Mars 2020 mission. The team identified the cause of the issue with the liquid oxygen sensor line found during Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR). A small leak was located in the weld of the line, which has been repaired and tested.

The rover, carrying seven different scientific instruments, is slated to arrive at the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021, regardless of what day it lifts off during the launch period. During its time on Mars, Perseverance will search for signs of past microbial life and collect rock and soil samples of the Martian surface for future return to Earth.

The mission, managed by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), will provide key insight into some of the challenges associated with future human exploration of Mars. NASA’s Launch Services Program based at Kennedy Space Center is managing the launch.

For more information, visit the mission website.

NASA, ULA Targeting NET July 30 for Mars 2020 Launch

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover at Kennedy Space Center
More than 10 million names were etched onto a microchip, which was placed aboard Perseverance on March 16, 2020. Photo credit: NASA/JPL

Due to launch vehicle processing delays in preparation for spacecraft mate operations, NASA and United Launch Alliance have moved the first launch attempt of the Mars 2020 mission to no earlier than July 30. A liquid oxygen sensor line presented off-nominal data during the Wet Dress Rehearsal, and additional time is needed for the team to inspect and evaluate. Flight analysis teams have expanded the mission launch opportunities to August 15 and are examining if the launch period may be extended further into August.

Gearing Up for Mars 2020 Rover

The Spacecraft Assembly and Rotation Fixture (SCARF) that will be used to process the Mars 2020 rover is photographed inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 22, 2019.
The Spacecraft Assembly and Rotation Fixture (SCARF) that will be used to process the Mars 2020 rover is photographed inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 22, 2019. Attached to the SCARF is an access stand that will allow personnel to reach the spacecraft when it’s held above ground level. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Critical ground support equipment needed to prepare NASA’s Mars 2020 rover for its journey to the Red Planet has arrived at a payload processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rover is being manufactured at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and, once complete, will be sent to Kennedy for assembly, prelaunch processing and checkouts.

The spin table, one of the crucial hardware elements that will be utilized to process the Mars 2020 rover, is photographed inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 22, 2019.
The spin table, one of the crucial hardware elements that will be utilized to process the Mars 2020 rover, is photographed inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 22, 2019. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

One vital element of hardware involved in spacecraft processing will be the Spacecraft Assembly and Rotation Fixture (SCARF) and its access stand, allowing teams to reach the spacecraft when it’s held above ground level. This fixture also is where all of the individual spacecraft elements will be mated together. Once assembly is finalized, the SCARF will rotate the spacecraft 180 degrees for encapsulation into the launch vehicle’s payload fairing, where it will remain for launch.

Developed under NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, the Mars 2020 rover is designed to better understand the geology of Mars and seek signs of ancient microbial life. The mission will collect and store a set of rock and soil samples that could be returned to Earth in the future. It also will test new technology to benefit future robotic and human exploration of Mars. About the size of a car and close to the same dimensions as the Curiosity rover, the Mars 2020 rover will carry seven different scientific instruments to conduct studies aimed at benefiting future Mars exploration efforts.

The rover is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2020 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket, procured by NASA’s Launch Services Program.