Katherine Snell - NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador

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Mars 2020 - Google Search

February 19, 2021

This high-resolution image shows one of the six wheels aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, which landed on Feb. 18, 2021. The image was taken by one of Perseverance’s color Hazard Cameras (Hazcams).

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent missions by NASA, in cooperation with ESA (the ESA - European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The NASA Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to NASA Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance and NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover.

Credit: NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech