Mars 2020, Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone, NASA, USA

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NASA’s Mars rovers are on the move and bringing the public along (NASA Mars Report March 15, 2022)

Mar 15, 2022

NASA’s rovers are putting their gears in drive on Mars, making discoveries along the way. NASA's Curiosity rover captured some interesting images on Mount Sharp while heading toward an area called Greenheugh Pediment. Over in Jezero Crater, NASA's Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter are both gearing up for a new destination. Perseverance is wrapping up its first science campaign on the floor of Jezero Crater and, with the help of sophisticated self-driving abilities, will head toward the remnants of a fan-shaped deposit of river sediments known as a delta to collect more samples. Ingenuity is planning updates to its software to improve operational safety.

You can make your own discoveries by visiting the raw image pages for the Curiosity rover mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/ and Perseverance rover mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/, which feature unprocessed images coming straight down from the rovers.

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NASA’s self-driving Perseverance Mars Rover is breaking records

Apr 8, 2022

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is using its self-driving capabilities as it treks across Jezero Crater seeking signs of ancient life and gathering rock and soil samples for planned return to Earth.

With the help of special 3D glasses, rover drivers on Earth plan routes with specific stops, but
increasingly allow the rover to "take the wheel" and choose how it gets to those stops. Perseverance's auto-navigation system, known as AutoNav, makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards, and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth.

Now the rover can drive through these more complex terrains, which helps Perseverance achieve its science goals and break driving records. The rover is traversing from an area near its landing site, "Octavia E. Butler Landing," to an area where an ancient river flowed into a body of water and deposited sediments (known as a delta).

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Perseverance observes Solar Eclipse on Mars

Apr 21, 2022

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to observe Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun, on 2 April 2022. The eclipse lasted a little over 40 seconds, much shorter than a typical solar eclipse on Earth, as Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth’s Moon.

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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captures record flight

May 27, 2022

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made a record-breaking 25th flight on April 18, 2022. The navigation camera aboard the rotorcraft captured its longest and fastest flight to date on the Red Planet. The helicopter covered 2,310 feet (704 meters) at a max speed of 12 mph (5.5 meters per second).

Footage of the 161.3-second flight was sped up approximately five times. In the video, Ingenuity first reaches an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters). The helicopter then moves southwest and accelerates to 12 mph (5.5 meters per second) in less than three seconds. Ingenuity flies over a group of sand ripples and then by several rock fields. Finally, the helicopter finds a landing spot when relatively flat terrain appears below.

Ingenuity became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021, from Wright Brothers Field in Jezero Crater, Mars.

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New Mars panorama from Curiosity

Jun 22, 2022

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured 10 images with its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on 2 May 2022, the 3,462nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The view shows a sulfate-bearing region ahead of its current location in the Gale Crater. Dark boulders near the center of the panorama are thought to have formed from sand deposited in ancient streams or ponds.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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Curiosity – A decade on Mars (Live Public Talk)

Streamed live on Jul 22, 2022

Ten years and over 17 miles of driving has taught us there is more to Mars than we could ever imagine. We’ll take a look at highlights from the past decade of this extraordinary mission and see where it’s leading us next.

Speakers:
Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity Project Scientist, NASA JPL
Keri Bean, Curiosity Rover Planner Deputy Team Lead, NASA JPL

Host:
Nikki Wyrick, Public Services Office, NASA JPL

Co-Host:
Sarah Marcotte, Public Outreach Specialist, NASA JPL

(Original Air Date: July 21, 2022)

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NASA’s Curiosity rover turns 10: here’s what it’s learned

Aug 5, 2022

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover set out to answer a big question when it landed on the Red Planet 10 years ago: Could Mars have supported ancient life? Scientists have discovered the answer is yes and have been working to learn more about the planet’s past habitable environment.

In this Mars Report, Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Abigail Fraeman provides an update on the rover’s capabilities a decade after landing in Gale Crater. Now, Curiosity is heading to an area that may help answer how long ancient life could have persisted on the Red Planet as Mars went through significant changes in the climate.

Read more about where Curiosity is currently exploring. Download a poster celebrating Curiosity’s 10 years on Mars here.

Some of the images in the video include color enhancement that exaggerate small changes in color from place to place in the Martian scene. This makes it easier for the science team to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. For instance, the sky on Mars would not actually look blue to a human explorer on the Red Planet, but pinkish.

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10 years on Mars: The Curiosity rover's journey

Aug 5, 2022

It has been 10 years since the Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars. Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists Nina Lanza (principal investigator for ChemCam) and Sam Clegg (co-principal investigator on ChemCam) talk about the purpose and accomplishments of the ongoing Curiosity mission.

'LA-UR-22-28138'

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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover investigates geologically rich area (News briefing)

Sep 15, 2022

NASA will host a briefing to provide highlights from the first year-and-a-half of the Perseverance rover’s exploration of Mars.

The rover landed in Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021 and is collecting samples of rock and other materials from the Martian surface. Perseverance is investigating the sediment-rich ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater.

Speakers:
• Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
• Laurie Leshin, JPL director
• Rick Welch, Perseverance deputy project manager, JPL
• Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, Caltech
• Sunanda Sharma, Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) scientist, JPL
• David Shuster, Perseverance returned sample scientist, University of California, Berkeley

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JPL and the Space Age: Landing on Mars

Premiered Dec 23, 2022

In the summer of 2003, two NASA rovers began their journeys to Mars at a time when the Red Planet and Earth were the nearest they had been to each other in 60,000 years. To capitalize on this alignment, the rovers had been built at breakneck speed by teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The mission came amid further pressures, from mounting international competition to increasing public scrutiny following the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven. NASA was in great need of a success.

“Landing on Mars” is the story of Opportunity and Spirit surviving a massive solar flare during cruise, the now well-known “six minutes of terror,” and what came close to being a mission-ending software error for the first rover once it was on the ground.

Documentary length: 60 minutes