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Mars 2020
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.
Mars 2020 landing ellipse in Jezero Crater
This image shows the northwest of the 35-kilometre-wide Jezero Crater north of the Martian equator with the remains of an ancient delta, near which the Mars rover Perseverance will land on 18 February 2021 at 21:55 CET (signal arrival on Earth). The delta was formed by sediments carried along by a river that flowed into the crater from the west and whose dried-up valley is still clearly visible today. Here, the Perseverance rover will search for fossil microbial life and collect samples for later transport to Earth. The image was acquired by DLRs High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.
Mars rover Perseverance and helicopter Ingenuity
On 18 February 2021, NASA's Mars 2020 rover Perseverance and the Mars helicopter Ingenuity will land in Jezero crater. Perseverance is the most complex rover that NASA has ever sent to Mars. Ingenuity, a technology demonstration, will be the first flying craft to attempt a controlled flight on another planet. The 50-centimetre-tall helicopter drone is attached to the underside of Perseverance and will be lowered to the ground. Perseverance will move a few metres away and follow the flight demonstration with the rover cameras.
Launch | 30 July 2020 |
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Launch location | Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA) |
Launch vehicle | ULA Atlas V-541 (two stages) |
Mission duration | One Mars year (corresponds to two Earth years) |
Mission control centre | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) |
Landing on Mars | 21:55 CET on 18 February 2021 |
Landing site | Jezero Crater |
Perseverance rover | |
Mass | 1025 kilograms |
Dimensions (length x width x height) | 3 x 2.7 m x 2.1 metres |
Number of experiments | 7 |
Maximum speed | 4.2 centimetres per second |
Power speed | 110 watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator |
Instruments |
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Technology demonstrators |
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Flight over Jezero Crater – landing site of the Mars 2020 mission
A simulated flight over Jezero Crater on Mars. Home to a standing body of water more than 3.5 billion years ago, this crater is where NASA’s Mars 2020 mission Perseverance rover will land to search for signs of past microbial life. The video is based on data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, which has been in orbit around Mars since 2003. HRSC is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Image: 1/3, Credit:
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/HRSC Science Team
DLR planetary research and NASA's Mars 2020 mission
For decades, Mars has played an important role in the Solar System research activities of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It has become increasingly clear that Earth’s neighbour in space shared more similarities with Earth in its early days than it does today. It is therefore considered to be the planet on which the existence of life long ago – or perhaps even today – is most conceivable. DLR scientists are involved in NASA’s Mars 2020 mission with the Perseverance rover, particularly for image processing and evaluation. In this video, they explain the scientific context of the mission, the process of the extremely technically demanding landing on Mars and the geology of the landing site in the Jezero Crater.
Image: 2/3, Credit:
©NASA/DLR
Animation: Flight over Jezero crater on Mars
The video shows a simulated flight over Jezero crater on Mars. An old river delta near the western rim of the crater testifies that it once housed a lake. The 'Perseverance' rover of NASA's Mars 2020 mission is scheduled to land here in February 2021 and search for traces of earlier life on Mars. DLR is represented on the mission's science team and is involved in the evaluation of the data and images.
Image: 3/3, Credit:
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
