Concept
Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Jezero crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. It was manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched on July 30, 2020, at 11:50 UTC. Confirmation that the rover successfully landed on Mars was received on February 18, 2021, at 20:55 UTC. As of , Perseverance has been active on Mars for sols ( Earth days, or ) since its landing. Following the rover's arrival, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing. Perseverance has a similar design to its predecessor rover, Curiosity, although it was moderately upgraded. It carries seven primary payload instruments, nineteen cameras, and two microphones. The rover also carried the mini-helicopter Ingenuity to Mars, an experimental aircraft and technology testbed that made the first powered flight on another planet on April 19, 2021. As of May 26, 2023, it has made 52 successful flights and continues to break its own records for speed, distance and altitude. The rover's goals include identifying ancient Martian environments capable of supporting life, seeking out evidence of former microbial life existing in those environments, collecting rock and soil samples to store on the Martian surface, and testing oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere to prepare for future crewed missions. The Perseverance rover has four main science objectives that support the Mars Exploration Program's science goals: Looking for habitability: identify past environments that were capable of supporting microbial life. Seeking biosignatures: seek signs of possible past microbial life in those habitable environments, particularly in specific rock types known to preserve signs over time. Caching samples: collect core rock and regolith ("soil") samples and store them within the rover and on the Martian surface (as a backup) for delivery to a future sample return rocket. Preparing for humans: test oxygen production from the Martian atmosphere.
