Perseverance is a car-sized rover exploring Jezero Crater, the site of a river delta that flowed into a lake billions of years ago. It landed in February 2021 using the sky-crane maneuver and carried Ingenuity, the small helicopter that became the first aircraft to fly on another planet.
Its core job is astrobiology: examining rocks that may preserve signatures of ancient microbial life, and sealing the most promising samples in titanium tubes. Those cached samples are intended for a future Mars Sample Return campaign, which would be the first round trip of material from Mars.
If life ever existed on Mars, Jezero's lakebed rocks are among the most likely places its traces survive. Perseverance is the first mission built to collect evidence rigorous enough to settle the question in Earth laboratories rather than from orbit or a rover camera.
Key Facts
- Landed
- February 18, 2021, Jezero Crater
- Mission
- Astrobiology and sample caching
- Size
- About 1 ton, car-sized, nuclear powered
- Companion
- Ingenuity helicopter (72 flights, 2021-2024)
- Samples
- Titanium tubes cached for future return to Earth
Timeline
July 2020
Launch from Cape Canaveral
February 2021
Sky-crane landing in Jezero Crater
April 2021
Ingenuity makes the first powered flight on another planet
September 2021
First rock sample sealed
Next up
Continued delta exploration; sample return architecture under study
Latest Perseverance News
Perseverance Captures Another Phobos Transit
Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture the silhouette of Phobos, one of the two Martian moons, as it crossed in front of the Sun on Aug. 12, 2026, the 1,948th Martian day, or sol,
Perseverance
What Lake Bonneville Left Behind
The drying of the massive lake exposed playas that became the setting for feats of engineering and technological ingenuity, as well as epic tales of exploration and desperation.
Perseverance
The first self-driving vehicle on Mars has proven to be a smashing success
About 90 percent of the distance driven by Perseverance has been autonomous.
Perseverance
NASA’s Perseverance Captures Phobos and Earth
Description This composite of seven images from the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shows Earth, visible as a small bright dot moving from upper left to lower right, passing behind the Martian
Perseverance
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Watches Earth Vanish Behind Martian Moon
Earth and the Martian moon Phobos dance together in a series of images recently acquired by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Earth appears as a point of light in the Martian sky, disappearing behind the crescent of Phobos
Perseverance
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reads Record of Ancient Mars Impacts
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has uncovered evidence that a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) stack of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. Referred to as the “Broom Point membe
Perseverance
Facts last reviewed 2026-07-11. Official mission page: science.nasa.gov