Mars 2020

NASA's Mars 2020 rover has taken its first drive as part of preflight systems tests. On December 19, 2019, the unmanned explorer completed a 10-hour drive operating under its own weight and put its autonomous navigation system through its paces.

The Mars 2020 rover will be touching down in Jezero Crater and now there’s more evidence this was a good choice. Two new studies have found that the landing site is rich in minerals that could preserve fossils of ancient microbes and other lifeforms.

Coaxed carefully by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mars 2020 has taken its full weight on its wheels and legs for the first time as part of several weeks of tests.

NASA engineers have completed a successful separation test of the Mars 2020 rover and its descent stage that will deliver it to the surface of the Red Planet.

Engineers have attached what could be the first ever helicopter to fly on another world, to NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.

NASA's Mars 2020 rover has received a key piece of equipment for the collection, containment, and eventual return to Earth of samples of the Red Planet as engineers installed the bit carousel of the Sample Caching System used to store and sort out the tools and core samples.

With an eye to making future unmanned and manned planetary landing missions safer, NASA has installed the first components of the advanced Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation 2 (MEDLI2) sensor suite aboard the Mars 2020 entry vehicle.

NASA's Mars 2020 rover passed its first set of eye exams as engineers work on the unmanned explorer's array of cameras. The first set of cameras was installed on the front of the rover at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in July and then given the robotic equivalent of an eye-chart test.

NASA's Mars 2020 rover got a bit of a workout recently as it flexed its mechanical muscles. Captured in a time-lapse video, the robotic arm with its 88-lb "hand" did a bit of curling as space agency engineers guided it from its deployed to its stowed configuration for launch to the Red Planet.

NASA has given the green light to begin placing the plutonium-238 dioxide fuel into the nuclear Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) on the Mars 2020 robotic rover that will provide it with heat and electricity.

NASA's Mars 2020 rover now has its arm. On June 21, 2019, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, began attaching the intricate robotic arm and hand that the unmanned explorer will use to search for signs of past and present life on the Red Planet.

NASA's Mars 2020 rover is getting ready to roll, as engineers have installed its wheels. On June 13th, the unmanned nuclear explorer received its port and starboard legs and wheels, that will allow it to roam the surface of the Red Planet as it seeks out signs of present or past life.