Skip to main content

NASA’s Perseverance rover has one final review to pass before launch to Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover is almost certified as ready for its trip to Mars, launching on Thursday, July 30. This week, the rover passed its Flight Readiness Review. The next hurdle for the project is the final Launch Readiness Review which will take place on Monday, July 27.

The Launch Readiness Review will check whether all of the hardware is ready for the launch itself, giving final approval for the launch to go ahead. After this review concludes, NASA will hold a conference to announce its results.

Getting NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover to the Launch Pad

This launch represents the best opportunity yet to discover evidence of ancient life on Mars and is the culmination of years of work including several difficult months during the pandemic.

The payload fairing, or nose cone, containing NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is maneuvered into place atop the Atlas V rocket that will hurl it toward Mars.
The payload fairing, or nose cone, containing NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is maneuvered into place atop the Atlas V rocket that will hurl it toward Mars. The image was taken on July 7, 2020, inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida. NASA/KSC

To prepare the rover for its launch, it was previously stacked with the Ingenuity helicopter, in a process during which the helicopter was placed on top of the rover and both vehicles were tucked inside a shell along with a parachute to help slow their descent during the Mars landing. The vehicles will land with the assistance of a descent stage, using a system called skycrane which was first used for landing Curiosity, Perseverance’s sister rover.

The rover, helicopter, and decent stage were then transported across the country from California to Florida, where they were enclosed within the nose cone or fairing of the Atlas V rocket which will be used for the launch. With all these steps complete, the final review will certify that everything is safe and ready for launch.

“We’re pleased to be passing another milestone with the completion of the Flight Readiness Review,” Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for the mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement this week. “But we’ll keep our heads down through the final prelaunch activities and the opening of the launch window next week, until we’re certain this spacecraft is safely on its way. Mars is a tough customer, and we don’t take anything for granted.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA’s Mars helicopter just did something it’s never done before
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA’s Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, has surpassed the mission team’s expectations for the diminutive drone-like machine.

Ever since its maiden flight over the Martian surface in April 2021 in which it became the first aircraft to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet, Ingenuity has gone on to perform evermore complex flights and even assisted Perseverance, the ground-based rover that Ingenuity traveled with from Earth to Mars before their spectacular touchdown in February 2021.

Read more
NASA’s wild plan to launch a rocket from Mars is ‘like something from an amusement park’
An illustration shows a rocket tossed in the air from the surface of Mars and igniting.

When it comes to missions to Mars, NASA has been on a winning streak in recent decades. Its Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix, Curiosity, InSight, and Perseverance missions have all landed successfully on the Martian surface, and we're learning more than ever before about how to land on and explore the planet safely. The agency’s next plans for Mars, however, are a whole new level of ambitious. The Perseverance rover has been collecting samples of Mars dust and rock as it travels around, and the aim of the Mars Sample Return mission is to get those samples back to Earth.

The exact design of the mission has changed since it was first announced, but the current plan involves sending a lander to the surface called the Sample Return Lander (SRL) and then getting Perseverance to drop off the samples at this lander. Those samples will be loaded into a rocket inside the lander called the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will launch into Mars orbit, where it will rendezvous with a spacecraft called the Earth Return Orbiter, which will bring those samples back to Earth.

Read more
How one NASA lander decoded secrets lying beneath the surface of Mars
Dust blankets the solar panels of the Mars Insight lander, shortly before its demise.

Dust blankets the solar panels of the Mars Insight lander, shortly before its demise. NASA

The life of the Mars InSight lander came to an end last year as its solar panels were covered with dust and its power supply slowly dwindled away. After four years of research and data collection, NASA officially declared the end of the mission in December 2022.

Read more