Hunting for ancient life — and carrying the first aircraft to fly on another world.
Perseverance touched down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021 — an ancient river delta chosen because it's one of the best places on Mars to look for fossil microbial life. It brought the Ingenuity helicopter, made oxygen from the Martian air, and is sealing rock samples for a future return to Earth.
Own its landing site — from $99.99 →Perseverance was aimed at Jezero Crater for one reason: 3.5 billion years ago a river spilled into it and built a delta. On Earth, deltas are superb at trapping and preserving signs of life — so if Mars ever had microbes, Jezero's mud is one of the likeliest places to still hold the evidence.
Tucked under its belly was Ingenuity, a 1.8-kg helicopter. On April 19, 2021 it rose a few metres into the thin Martian air — the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. It was meant to fly 5 times; it flew 72.
Perseverance also ran MOXIE, an experiment that pulled breathable oxygen out of Mars' carbon-dioxide atmosphere — a first step toward one day letting humans make air and rocket fuel on the surface.
Perseverance confirmed from the ground that Jezero once held a lake fed by a river — exactly the setting scientists hoped for.
It has drilled and hermetically sealed dozens of rock cores, left in caches for a future mission to fly back to Earth.
MOXIE repeatedly produced oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, proving the technology works on Mars.