1,000 Days of Perseverance

The path taken by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover during the first 1,000 sols (Martian days) of its mission at Jezero Crater is annotated on this overhead view taken by the HiRISE camera aboard the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. White circles signify locations on the surface where the rover stopped after completing a traverse. The pale-blue circle at upper left indicates the rover’s position as of Dec. 12, 2023.

Figure A, showing the same general area, is annotated to indicate the route and the two locations where the rover used its PIXL instrument to analyze abrasion patches “Ouzel Falls” and “Bills Bay” and its drill to core corresponding rock samples, “Otis Peak” and “Lefroy Bay.”

The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/