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.

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.”

Recommended Videos

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
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Curiosity rover battles up a 23-degree slope in its exploration of Mars
Curiosity Rover

The Curiosity rover is slowly making its way up Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall mountain on Mars. Mountains are useful to study as their steep slopes can reveal layers of material laid down over time, like a geological time capsule. But just like heaving up a mountain is a challenge for humans, it can be tricky for rovers too. Curiosity recently took on a particularly steep and slippery slope, marking its most challenging climb to date.

How difficult terrain is for a rover to pass depends on a number of factors, including how steep it is, how slippery the sand is, and what obstacles such as boulders or sharp rocks are present. This ascent, which the rover tackled through May and June, had all of the above including a 23-degree incline. “If you’ve ever tried running up a sand dune on a beach – and that’s essentially what we were doing – you know it’s hard, but there were boulders in there as well,” said Amy Hale, a Curiosity rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in a statement.

Read more
NASA’s Mars rover marvels at ‘big chunky weirdo’
The Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on Sept. 10, 2021 — sol 198 of the mission – in Jezero Crater after coring into a rock called ‘Rochette.’ Rock core samples from the floor of the crater will be brought back to Earth and analyzed to characterize the planet’s geology and past climate.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been busy exploring Mars since landing there in spectacular fashion in February 2021.

The car-sized vehicle is equipped with a bunch of science tools and cameras to help it in its quest to find evidence of ancient microbial life on the distant planet. It’s also gathering together samples of Martian rock and soil for return to Earth in the ambitious Mars Sample Return mission. Additionally, the current mission offers an opportunity to test robotic technology that could be further developed for the first crewed mission to Mars.

Read more
Perseverance rover finds organic molecules in Mars’ Jezero Crater
mars 2020 perseverance rover

One of the biggest aims of Mars research right now is trying to figure out if life ever existed on Mars. Given how dry and inhospitable Mars is today, scientists are pretty certain that there's nothing living there currently. But millions of years ago, Mars could have looked a lot more like Earth, with plentiful surface water in rivers and lakes. Now, research focuses on using the instruments on rovers like the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers to try and look for evidence of ancient life on the planet.

Recently, researchers used data from Perseverance's SHERLOC instrument, a camera and spectrometer used to detect minerals and organic molecules, to confirm the discovery of a variety of organic molecules in Mars' Jezero Crater. Similar findings have been made by the Curiosity Rover in the Gale Crater, but these are some of the first indications of the finding in this other location.

Read more