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

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Perseverance rover captures dust Devils Whirling Across Mars (Mars Report)

Apr 3, 2025

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured new images of multiple dust devils while exploring the rim of Jezero Crater on Mars. The largest dust devil was approximately 210 feet wide (65 meters). In this Mars Report, atmospheric scientist Priya Patel explains what dust devils can teach us about weather conditions on the Red Planet. NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021, with a key objective to collect and cache samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life.

 

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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Explores “Spiderwebs” on Mars (360)

Jun 23, 2025

Drag your mouse or move your phone to explore this 360-degree panorama provided by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. This view shows some of the rover’s first looks at a region that has only been viewed from space until now, and where the surface is crisscrossed with spiderweblike patterns.

00:00 Title
00:08 Intro
00:26 Labeled Image
00:50 Groundwater Rock Vein
01:43 Unlabeled Image

First seen in the years before Curiosity landed in 2012, these patterns are boxwork formations — a kind of low ridge, some just a few inches tall, created by groundwater as it soaks into subsurface rock cracks. That groundwater left behind minerals that accumulated in those cracks, hardening and becoming cementlike. Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within.This video will show you rover tracks left by Curiosity, some of the boxwork ridges and an example of a white mineral vein found running through a rock crack — another sign of how groundwater shaped this area.This panorama is stitched together from 291 individual images captured by the rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, between May 15 and May 18, 2025 (the 4,451st Martian day, or sol, of the mission and the 4,454th sol). The color in these images has been adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.Note on best viewing: Not all browsers support 360-degree videos. YouTube supports playback on computers using Chrome, Firefox, MS Edge, and Opera browsers. For the best experience on a mobile device, play this video in the YouTube app. To improve the resolution, open the video settings (using the gear icon) and select the highest quality available.

science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity

 

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Article "Has Perseverance found a biosignature on Mars?"
Interpreting the data is tricky because other non-biological processes could account for the findings.

by Jennifer Ouellette
September 10, 2025

 

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Article "NASA taps Claude to conjure Mars rover's travel plan"
Is there life on Mars? Well, there's Claude in the machine

by Thomas Claburn
January 31, 2026

 

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Article "Anthropic’s Claude AI plans Mars route for NASA’s Perseverance rover"
JPL engineers believes that Claude can reduce time it takes to design routes by about half

February 1, 2026

 

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Perseverance Rover’s View of Crater Rim Drive

Jan 30, 2026

This animation shows Perseverance’s point of view during drive of 807 feet (246 meters) along the rim of Jezero Crater on Dec. 10, 2025, the 1,709th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Captured over two hours and 35 minutes, 53 Navigation Camera (Navcam) image pairs were combined with rover data on orientation, wheel speed, and steering angle, as well as data from Perseverance's Inertial Measurement Unit, and placed into a 3D virtual environment. The result is this reconstruction with virtual frames inserted about every 4 inches (0.1 meters) of drive progress.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

 

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How Perseverance Learned to ‘Self-Locate’ on Mars

Feb 18, 2026

NASA’s Perseverance rover can now precisely determine its own location on Mars without waiting for human help from Earth. This is possible thanks to a new technology called Mars Global Localization.
This technology rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps. It’s done with an algorithm that runs on the rover’s Helicopter Base Station processor, which was originally used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. In a few minutes, the algorithm can pinpoint Perseverance’s position to within about 10 inches (25 centimeters). The technology will help the rover drive farther autonomously and keep exploring.

Mars Global Localization was first used successfully for regular mission operations on Feb. 2, 2026, and the team expects related reliability techniques to inform future missions, including exploration on the Moon.

"NASA’s Perseverance Now Autonomously Pinpoints Its Location on Mars"

February 18, 2026

 

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Article "NASA’s Curiosity Rover Discovers ‘Origin-of-Life’ Molecules Never Before Seen on Mars"
New findings provide even more evidence to suggest Mars wasn't always a lifeless red desert.

by Ellyn Lapointe
April 21, 2026

 

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Two Rovers, Billions of Years of Martian History – NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity Rovers

Apr 27, 2026

NASA has two rovers on Mars – but they’re exploring entirely different eras of the planet’s past.
Separated by 2,300 miles, the two rovers are uncovering clues from very different moments in Martian history. Perseverance is on the rim of Jezero Crater, where it’s studying some of the oldest Martian terrain ever explored while searching for signs of ancient microbial life. Meanwhile, Curiosity is climbing Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, where layers of rock reveal how Mars’ climate changed as water dried up from its surface.

Together, the missions are helping scientists reconstruct how Mars formed, when and where water existed, and the planet’s history of having the right conditions to support life. Their discoveries are offering a clearer picture of how Mars became the dry and dusty world we know today.

 

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Testing the Next Generation of Mars Helicopter Rotor Blades

May 7, 2026

NASA is pushing the limits of flight on Mars — by spinning helicopter rotor blades so fast, they’re breaking the sound barrier. During recent tests at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineers accelerated the tips of next-generation rotor blades beyond Mach 1 inside a special chamber that simulates the atmospheric conditions of the Red Planet.

The faster a Mars helicopter’s rotors spin, the more it can carry and the farther it can fly. But flying on Mars is incredibly challenging: Its atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s, which makes generating lift difficult. Data from 137 test runs show that these rotor blade tips can exceed the speed of sound without coming unglued, an important step toward designing aircraft capable of carrying significantly heavier science payloads. The rotors were developed and manufactured by AeroVironment in Simi Valley, California.

These advancements build on the legacy of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, a technology demonstration that made history but did not carry science instruments. Future concepts, including NASA’s SkyFall project, are being designed to carry small payloads — like instruments and sensors — to collect data in support of future human and robotic missions.

By pushing rotors beyond the speed of sound, engineers are unlocking new possibilities for low-altitude aerial exploration on Mars. These next-generation helicopters could travel farther, carry more, and help scientists and mission planners better understand the Martian surface, paving the way for the next era of exploration.

 

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“Arbot” panorama, Jezero Crater, Mars

May 13, 2026

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture a panorama of an area nicknamed “Arbot” during the rover’s deepest push west beyond Jezero Crater, Mars, on 5 April 2026.

 

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Article "NASA’s Curiosity Rover Got Its Drill Stuck on a Rock. Here’s How They Freed It"
This is the first time NASA has encountered a situation like this, and it took nearly a week to resolve.

by Marta Musso
May 13, 2026