NASA's newest Mars rover Perseverance: Everything you need to know - CNET

The next-gen rover is a laboratory on wheels and carries an incredible cargo: A tiny helicopter designed to explore Mars by air.

The Perseverance rover on Mars as imagined by an artist?

NASA's Perseverance rover hopes to answer our biggest burning question about Mars history: Did the red planet once host life.

Since Sojourner in 1997, NASA has sent a succession of increasingly sophisticated wheeled explorers to Mars.

The mission is planned to last for at least one Mars year, which works out to about 687 days on Earth (it takes longer for Mars to go around the sun).

"Owing to the relative positions of Earth and Mars to each other, launch opportunities come up only every 26 months," said NASA in a June 2020 release.

"If the spacecraft were going to overshoot the landing target, the parachute would be deployed earlier," said NASA.

The mission is equipped with cameras and a microphone to capture all of the excitement and stress as NASA attempts to land Perseverance gently onto the surface of Mars.

Jezero Crater is located just north of Mars' equator and was once home to a river delta.

The car-sized Perseverance rover looks fairly similar to its predecessor, Curiosity, but also represents quite a few technology advances since Curiosity was designed.

The Perseverance rover is stocked with instruments that it will use to investigate the Jezero Crater on Mars.

According to NASA, its main job is "to take high-definition video, panoramic color and 3D images of the Martian surface and features in the atmosphere with a zoom lens to magnify distant targets." The mastcam will be our main viewing window onto the Jezero Crater.

The NASA Mars helicopter team attaches a piece to the flight model in early 2019.

"Let's send a helicopter to Mars" might sound a little far-fetched, but NASA is doing it anyway.

NASA currently has two machines operating on the surface of Mars, the stationary InSight lander and the Mars rover Curiosity

The last time we had two functioning rovers on Mars was in 2018 when the Opportunity rover lost contact with home due to the impact of a global dust storm

The plate also bears an illustration of the Earth, our sun and Mars

Perseverance is the culmination of years of effort from NASA, but it's also an emissary for humanity, an extension of our curiosity and sense of wonder and a little bit of Earth on Mars