Perseverance

Perseverance launched into space on July 30th, 2020 and is now unknown km from Earth. Its primary destination is Mars, which it arrived at on February 18th, 2021 . Wherever Perseverance goes, it carries its trusty drill, laser micro-imager, microphones, oxygen producer, panoramic cameras, subsurface radar, ultraviolet spectrometer, weather station, and x-ray spectrometer. Perseverance often chats with humans from NASA.

The Perseverance rover, also known as Mars 2020, and its companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, are on a mission to explore the surface and air of Mars. Perseverance will be roving around the surface of Mars and drilling into rocks and soil to investigate if Mars may have hosted microbial life in the past. The rover will store some of the samples it collects in hopes of handing them off to a future Mars mission that could return the samples to Earth. Perseverance carries with it an instrument that can produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, which may become a useful technology for humans that may one day land on Mars. The Ingenuity helicopter will attempt to be the first flying space probe on Mars.

Worth Exploring:

create your own video game featuring the Ingenuity helicopter
listen to how sound is different on Mars

(top image: a photo of Perseverance landing as seen from the sky crane lowering it to the surface, NASA/JPL-Caltech)