Skip to main content

NASA finalizes next Mars rover, inching closer to 2020 launch

Almost four years after NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars, the space agency has decided to move forward with the final design and construction of its next rover to explore the Red Planet. For now dubbed simply the Mars 2020 rover, the machine will help NASA scientists investigate Martian surface rocks for signs of prior life, collect samples, and store them for recovery by missions in the future.

“The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth,” Geoffrey Yoder, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a NASA press release. “This mission marks a significant milestone in NASA’s Journey to Mars — to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our goal of sending humans to the Red Planet.”

The Mars 2020 rover will follow the design of Curiosity, but it will be packed with updated instruments and backed by a team of scientists who’ve been around a Martian dune or two. The new rover will be equipped with a coring drill to collect specimens and sample tubes for storage. Some 30 samples tubes will be left around the Red Planet for future collection. On Earth, the samples may be analyzed for signs of life and to detect potential health hazards for future manned missions to Mars.

NASA is also trying to bring the Mars mission closer to those on Earth by equipping the rover with a microphone and range of cameras to record the images and sounds of its entry.

“Nobody has ever seen what a parachute looks like as it is opening in the Martian atmosphere,” JPL’s David Gruel, assistant flight system manager for the Mars 2020 mission, said in the press release. “So this will provide valuable engineering information.”

“This will be a great opportunity for the public to hear the sounds of Mars for the first time, and it could also provide useful engineering information,” added Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace of JPL.

With this plan to progress, the Mars 2020 mission passes it’s third milestone into Phase C of development, which includes design and fabrication. With Phase C and Phase D (system assembly) complete, the mission will be on track to launch in the summer of 2020.

Editors' Recommendations

Dyllan Furness
Dyllan Furness is a freelance writer from Florida. He covers strange science and emerging tech for Digital Trends, focusing…
Watch how the Perseverance rover drives autonomously across Mars
Perseverance illustration

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been trundling across the surface of Mars since arriving on the planet in spectacular fashion in February last year.

The six-wheeled, SUV-sized vehicle is currently on its way to the Jezero River Delta as it continues its search for evidence of ancient microbial life on the red planet.

Read more
Curiosity rover nopes out of region of sharp Mars rocks
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to survey these wind-sharpened rocks, called ventifacts, on March 15, 2022, the 3,415th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The team has informally described these patches of ventifacts as “gator-back” rocks because of their scaly appearance.

There are many obstacles for a little rover exploring Mars to deal with, from steep hills to deep ravines to dust which can obscure solar panels or get into mechanical components. Now, the Curiosity rover has one more challenge to add to that list: The densest region of sharp rocks that the rover's NASA drivers have ever seen.

The rocks, sharpened into vicious points by the Martian wind, were spotted blocking Curiosity's path in an area called the Greenheugh Pediment on March 18. The team decided they couldn't risk running Curiosity's wheels over the jagged rocks, especially since similar rocks had already damaged the wheels earlier in the mission in 2017. “It was obvious from Curiosity’s photos that this would not be good for our wheels,” said Megan Lin, Curiosity Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “It would be slow going, and we wouldn’t have been able to implement rover-driving best practices.”

Read more
NASA’s Mars helicopter will fly furthest yet in next flight
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

In the year since NASA’s Mars helicopter first hovered above the martian surface to become the only aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flight on another planet, Ingenuity has taken 23 additional flights.

Now the mission team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is prepping the 4-pound, 19-inch-high helicopter for a record-breaking flight of 704 meters, a distance that will smash its current record by 77 meters.

Read more