NASA’s Perseverance rover descends to touch down on Mars in a still image from a video camera aboard the descent stage taken February 18, 2021.
Perseverance will investigate the surface geological processes and history of the Red Planet. This will include an assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. Perseverance is accompanied by the Ingenuity helicopter drone, which will attempt the first powered flight on any planet beyond Earth as a technological demonstration.
