This is not a first-time landing system as we had on Curiosity.”The Perseverance rover will target a landing inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater on Mars, home to an ancient river delta and a lake the size of Lake Tahoe that scientists believe filled the crater some 3.5 billion to 3.9 billion years ago. “For the first time we have an opportunity to use autonomous systems to avoid hazards as we land in Jezero Crater, and that’s technology that will feed forward into future robotic systems and human exploration systems.“We’re also carrying microphones for the first time,” he said. That camera system, located on top of a mast Perseverance will raise after landing, is named Mastcam-Z and will record video and 360-degree panoramas.“We’re carrying about 50 percent more surface payload than Curiosity did, and that was, by far, the most complex thing we’ve ever done up to that point in time,” Wallace said. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER (2,500 kilograms) and has six wheels designed with open structures rather than air-filled tires, similar to Odds are, a real crewed Martian rover wouldn't look quite like this: A look at the For one thing, it's unlikely to be black, since any astronaut vehicle must reflect radiation, not absorb it. The vehicle will drop the tubes on the surface of Mars for retrieval by another robotic mission in the late 2020s, which will bring the specimens back to Earth.“The mission objectives of our effort are to explore the geology of our landing site, to look for signs of biosignatures from the past,” said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer on the Mars 2020 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Kennedy Space Center Official Guide (That's retired NASA astronaut Mike Massimino in the driver's seat.) Allow 10 minutes The Mars Rover Concept Vehicle has been designed by the Parker Brothers Concepts and uses an electric motor which is powered by solar panels and a 700-volt battery. > Programs and Custom Tours "It's meant to inspire people," he said. The Perseverance rover also might be able to take pictures of the helicopter in flight.“For the first time ever, we’re going to fly a helicopter on another planet,” Bridenstine said. NASA. Kennedy Space Center Official Guide The tubes will ride to Mars inside the housing, and they will be returned to the sheath once filled with Martian rock samples.The Perseverance rover will carry 43 sample tubes to Mars, including “witness tubes” or blanks, which will allow scientists to cross-check rock and sediment specimens returned to Earth for contamination.The tubes are about the size and shape of a slim cigar, and the Perseverance rover will collect core samples on Mars that measure around a half-inch (13 millimeters) wide and 2.4 inches (60 millimeters) long.“Those samples tubes are part of a Sample and Caching System, which is one of our biggest engineering developments for this mission,” Steltzner said. The rover came with a $2.5 billion price tag, a cost that's being spread over a number of years. NASA NOW & NEXT “And it performed extremely well during that mission. Educational Programs at KSC Allow 10 minutes It was part of the US effort to ambitious, long-range project to bring the first Martian rock samples back to Earth to be analyzed for evidence of ancient life. “We’ve got commercial ruggedized cameras that we’ve distributed essentially all over the spacecraft, and they will get high-definition video that we’ll bring back after we land on the surface from the entire landing activity — from the inflation of the parachute to the touchdown of the rover.”The Mars 2020 mission’s development cost swelled nearly $360 million over NASA’s original prediction, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Meet the newest concept vehicle designed for navigating the demanding landscape of Mars: the Mars Rover Vehicle Navigator

NASA's Space Shuttle Program