NASA Launches Perseverance Rover To Mars

The Mars 2020 rover launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today at 11:50 UTC, on a seven-month journey to the Red Planet.

The ULA Atlas V's Centaur upper stage initially placed the Mars 2020 spacecraft into a parking orbit around Earth. The engine fired for a second time and the spacecraft separated from the Centaur as expected. Navigation data indicate the spacecraft is perfectly on course to Mars.

Perseverance will touch down on Mars in February 2021 inside the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater. It's mission include hunting for signs of life, demonstrating key technologies that will help us prepare for future exploration, and deploying a miniature helicopter -- the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, a technology demonstrator -- which will remain attached to the belly of Perseverance for the flight to Mars and the first 60 or so days on the surface -- is a flight testing experiment. The helicopter will attempt up to five powered, controlled flight in over 31 Earth days. The data acquired during these flight tests will help the next generation of Mars helicopters provide an aerial dimension to Mars explorations.

One of Perseverance's seven instruments -- the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument -- is designed to demonstrate that converting Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen is possible.

Today's liftoff was not all smooth. A slight earthquake rattled Perseverance's mission control center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, but It did not affect the countdown.

Perseverance entered a protective "safe mode" shortly after liftoff, when part of the spacecraft got unexpectedly cold as it passed through Earth's shadow. According to NASA officials, all temperatures are now back to normal.

"An interplanetary launch is fast-paced and dynamic, so a spacecraft is designed to put itself in safe mode if its onboard computer perceives conditions are not within its preset parameters," agency officials wrote in a postlaunch update. "Right now, the Mars 2020 mission is completing a full health assessment on the spacecraft and is working to return the spacecraft to a nominal configuration for its journey to Mars." 

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine hailed today's launch. "With the launch of Perseverance, we begin another historic mission of exploration," he said. "This amazing explorer's journey has already required the very best from all of us to get it to launch through these challenging times. Now we can look forward to its incredible science and to bringing samples of Mars home even as we advance human missions to the Red Planet. As a mission, as an agency, and as a country, we will persevere."

"Perseverance is the most capable rover in history because it is standing on the shoulders of our pioneers Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity," said Michael Watkins, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) in Southern California. "In the same way, the descendants of Ingenuity and MOXIE will become valuable tools for future explorers to the Red Planet and beyond."

NASA's JPL built and will manage operations of the Mars Perseverance rover. The Launch Services Program(LSP), based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management.

NASA and European Space Agency(ESA) are collaborating on two future mission to get the Martian rock and dust -- that will be collected by Perseverance’s Sample Caching System -- to an orbiter for return to Earth. When they arrive on Earth, the Mars samples will undergo in-depth analysis by scientists around the world.

WATCH the launch of Perseverance rover