Skip to main content

Watch the story so far of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been incredibly busy exploring the surface of Mars since its arrival in February.

A newly released video from the space agency highlights key moments from its mission so far, from its spectacular landing (shown in breathtaking footage) and collection of rock samples to the capture of sublime imagery and a few clever selfies.

Recommended Videos

And we mustn’t forget the Ingenuity helicopter, either, which traveled to Mars with Perseverance and in April became the first aircraft to perform powered, controlled flight on another planet.

NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Milestones - 2021 Year in Review

According to NASA, Perseverance’s main achievements to date include:

  • More than 1.8 miles (2.9 km) driven
  • A new record for the longest drive in a Martian day (548 feet/167 meters)
  • Six samples and counting of Martian rock and atmosphere that could eventually be brought to Earth for further study
  • More than 50GB of science data gathered
  • More than 100,000 images returned, including two selfies
  • 18 flights by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which hitched a ride and coordinates flights with the Perseverance rover

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, however, with the team having to face a series of challenges that included issues with Perseverance’s sample collection process, and problems during several of Ingenuity’s flights. But even from so far away, the crack team at NASA managed to overcome these hurdles and keep both Perseverance and Ingenuity fully operational.

The mission has many goals, including to confirm whether microbial life ever existed on the planet. Learning more about Mars’ atmosphere and structure could also help to pave the way for the first crewed missions to the distant location.

“What motivates us as engineers and scientists exploring another planet is the opportunity to continuously learn more,” surface operations mission manager Jessica Samuels says in the video.

Looking ahead to next year, Samuels added: “Now that we’ve toured the floor of Jezero Crater, we look forward to investigating the delta, a part of the crater where a river fed into a lake in the distant past. It’s almost as if we’re starting a new mission because we’ll start to cover new ground and make new scientific discoveries.”

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
SpaceX just launched two major NASA missions at once — watch the highlights
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA's SPHEREx and PUNCH missions to orbit.

Following a scrubbed launch attempt 24 hours earlier due to weather conditions and a technical issue, NASA and SpaceX successfully launched two missions — SPHEREx and PUNCH — from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday night.

SPHEREx is a space telescope that will map our cosmos, while PUNCH comprises four small satellites that will study our sun’s outer layer and solar winds. Both were carried to orbit by SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

Read more
NASA’s Mars rover collects rock sample ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’
Perseverance's 26th rock sample collected from the Martian surface.

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of its 26th collected rock sample, named “Silver Mountain,” using its onboard Sample Caching System Camera, located inside the rover's underbelly. The camera looks directly down into the top of a sample tube to take close-up pictures of the sampled material and the tube ahead of sealing and storage. NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA is getting excited about a special rock that its Perseverance rover has just scooped up from the surface of Mars.

Read more
Elon Musk voices renewed hope for first crewed Mars mission
In this artist’s concept, NASA astronauts drill into the Martian subsurface. The agency has created new maps that show where ice is most likely to be easily accessible to future astronauts.

With his new buddy Donald Trump now back in the White House, SpaceX boss Elon Musk has renewed hope of getting the first humans to Mars before the end of this decade.

During his inauguration speech on Monday, President Trump said that his administration “will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”

Read more