Mars 2020

NASA is continuing to prepare its freshly named Mars 2020 rover for launch later this year, with the team successfully attaching the sampling components that Perseverance will use to collect Martian rock and dust after touchdown.

NASA's Mars 2020 rover finally has a name: Perseverance. The result of a nationwide "Name the Rover" essay contest, the winning moniker was submitted by 13-year-old Alexander Mather of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia.

Science stands still for no one, and with a new year comes a new calendar of exciting events in spaceflight and exploration. New Atlas rounds up some of the most important milestones to look forward to in 2020.

NASA has revealed the nine finalist names for the space agency's Mars 2020 rover – and none of them are "Rovy McRoverface." Selected from 28,000 essays submitted by US elementary and high school students, the nine names will now go to a public poll.

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.