PIA23723: Cheering for Perseverance Landing


Cheering for Perseverance Landing

Caption:

Inside a mission support area at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Mars 2020 Perseverance team members displayed their joy as the spacecraft successfully completed a complex series of steps to safely touch down on the Martian surface. JPL built and manages operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.

Background Info:

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

The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the 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 rover.

For more about Perseverance, go to: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ or nasa.gov/perseverance .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Mars
System
Target Type Planet
Mission Mars 2020
Instrument Host Perseverance
Host Type Rover
Instrument
Detector
Extra Keywords Color, Dust, Moon
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2021-02-19
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23723
Identifier PIA23723