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.
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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.
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A newly-installed clean room webcam at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is giving members of the public a front row seat as technicians and engineers assemble the Mars 2020 rover.
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Technology that will guide NASA's Mars 2020 mission to a landing on the surface of Mars began testing recently in the skies over Death Valley in California. The tests are to demonstrate the device's ability to collect and analyze images of the mountainous landscape for landing navigation purposes.
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Members of the public can now sign up to have their name accompany NASA’s much anticipated Mars 2020 rover as it unravels the secrets of the Red Planet. The names will not be stored digitally within a chip, but instead etched upon one by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
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A vital part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission passed an important milestone as the unmanned probe's heat shield passed its final static load test under the thermal conditions it will encounter as it enters the Martian atmosphere.
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The first helicopter designed to operate on Mars has completed its first series of test flights. Beginning in January of this year, the 4-lb (1.8-kg) flight model of the Mars Helicopter was put through its paces in a simulated Martian environment at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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A huge moment of truth for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover will be the so-called “seven minutes of terror,” the period between entry into the atmosphere and touchdown on the surface of Mars. Mission scientists have now begun prepping for this with a round of simulations here on home soil.
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NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter is taking on a new job as it shifts into a lower orbit to act as a communications relay for the Mars 2020 mission slated to launch next year.
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After five years, NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission has a landing site penciled in. From a list of 60 candidate sites, the space agency has chosen Jezero Crater as the touchdown point for the nuclear-powered unmanned explorer designed to seek out places where life might once have existed.
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