NASA's Mars rover Perseverance
NASA's Mars rover Perseverance
Artist's impression of the Mars rover Perseverance of the NASA Mars 2020 mission, which will land in Jezero Crater on 18 February 2021. There, it will search for traces of life (so-called biosignatures). For the first time, soil and rock samples will also be collected and deposited on the surface of Mars to be collected and returned to Earth in the early 2030s by a later joint NASA-ESA mission. Perseverance has a mass of 1025 kilograms, which exerts a weight force of almost 350 kilograms on Mars. The rover is approximately three metres long, 2.7 metres wide, and has a robotic arm with a reach of 2.1 metres. The environment will be observed with the cameras on the mast, at a height of about two metres.
