Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

It’s been 2 years since the Perseverance rover landed on Mars

Georgina Torbet
By

Today marks the second anniversary since the rover Perseverance landed on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021. The nail-biting descent and landing process was followed around the world, and was particularly memorable because of the spectacular video taken from both the rover and its descent stage showing the touchdown onto the red planet.

In the two Earth years since Perseverance arrived on Mars, it has collected samples of rock and built a sample depot, deployed the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, created oxygen from the carbon dioxide atmosphere, recorded the sounds of Mars for the first time, trundled along the floor of the Jezero crater and made its way toward the site of an ancient river delta, and taken some stunning images.

Related Videos
This image of the floor of Jezero Crater was taken by one of the Navcam imagers aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Feb. 5, the 698th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
This image of the floor of Jezero Crater was taken by one of the Navcam imagers aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Feb. 5, the 698th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech

“Anniversaries are a time of reflection and celebration, and the Perseverance team is doing a lot of both,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech, in a statement. “Perseverance has inspected and performed data collection on hundreds of intriguing geologic features, collected 15 rock cores, and created the first sample depot on another world. With the start of the next science campaign, known as ‘Upper Fan,’ on Feb. 15, we expect to be adding to that tally very soon.”

The rover recently celebrated its first martian birthday — as Mars orbits the sun further out than Earth, a year there lasts longer at 687 days, or a bit less than two Earth years. As Mars missions have timelines measured in Mars years, that birthday marked the end of Perseverance’s primary mission or the minimum time that the rover needed to operate for. But as the rover is healthy and well it moved straight into its extended mission and is continuing its science goals of exploring Mars and searching for evidence of ancient life on the planet.

To celebrate this milestone, NASA shared some figures for Perseverance’s journey thus far. Since its landing, the rover has driven 9.3 miles, taken 662 recordings with its SuperCam microphone, taken over 15,000 hours of weather data, fired its laser used to analyze rock samples over 230,000 times, and taken a total of more than 166,000 images.

“Behind each number is a lot of thought and effort from a very talented group of women and men on the Perseverance team,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at JPL. “We have come a long way together, and I can’t think of a better group to work with as we go even farther.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Perseverance Mars rover shares detailed panorama of sample depot
The site of Perseverance's sample depot.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been busy creating what the space agency recently said was “humanity’s first sample depot on another planet.”

The depot, which is essentially a flat patch of land, contains 10 titanium tubes holding samples of martian rock and dust collected by NASA’s rover in the two years since it landed on the red planet.

Read more
Mars Curiosity rover finds evidence of water where it was expected to be dry
Curiosity Rover

The key to understanding whether Mars was ever habitable is water. For life as we know it to thrive, liquid water needs to be present -- and we know that even though it is now dry, there was once liquid water on the surface of Mars. However, the history of water on Mars is complex, and scientists are still debating exactly how long water was present there and when the planet dried up.

And it's about to get more complex. Recently, the Curiosity rover has made an intriguing discovery suggesting that water was once present in an area that scientists had thought would be dry.

Read more
Ingenuity helicopter helps researchers learn about dust on Mars
The Ingenuity helicopter is pictured on the surface of Mars.

One of the big challenges of Mars exploration is something very small: dust. Fine dust covers much of the martian surface, and high winds and low gravity mean the dust is easily whipped up off the surface, covering solar panels and gumming up components. The Ingenuity helicopter has had its own problems with dust on its solar panels, limiting the amount of power it could draw from the sun.

Now, researchers have used data from Ingenuity to understand more about how dust moves in the martian air, learning about the dynamics of dust, which could help future missions deal with this ongoing problem.

Read more