Since launching from Florida on July 30, NASA's Mars 2020 mission and its Perseverance rover have reached the halfway point in their voyage to the Red Planet. The landing remains scheduled for February.
Launched on July 30, NASA's Mars 2020 mission will deploy the Perseverance rover to search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. It will collect and cache promising rock and soil samples for a future return to Earth, enabling analysis with cutting-edge lab equipment. The mission also includes testing Ingenuity, NASA's experimental Mars helicopter.
Meanwhile, Perseverance—with Ingenuity tucked securely beneath—presses on toward Mars. As of Tuesday, the spacecraft had covered half its journey, approximately 235.4 million kilometers. "At 1:40 p.m. PT today [Tuesday, October 27], our spaceship had as many miles in its rearview mirror as it did in front of its windshield," said Julie Kangas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. "This is an important step. Next stop, Jezero Crater!"
Note that this halfway milestone measures total path distance, not straight-line separation. "The rover is not halfway between the two worlds," Kangas clarified. "In a straight line, Earth is only 42.7 million kilometers behind Perseverance, and Mars is 28.8 million kilometers ahead."
At the current distance, one-way communication from JPL takes about 2 minutes and 22 seconds. By landing, Perseverance will have traveled 470.8 million kilometres, with Mars roughly 209 million kilometers from Earth—a signal delay of about 11.5 minutes.
NASA engineers have conducted trajectory corrections by firing the rover's thrusters twice—on August 14 and September 20. Three more maneuvers are planned before the February 18, 2021, landing in Jezero Crater.
The team continues instrument checkouts. On October 15, the RIMFAX ground-penetrating radar and MOXIE oxygen generator (designed to produce breathable O2 from Martian CO2) tested in excellent condition. The PIXL X-ray spectrometer checkout proceeded nominally the following day.
