NASA engineer Nagin Cox lives on Earth but works on Mars time, where days are longer and time works differently. Her work with the rovers has entirely changed the way she thinks about time on Earth.
Since touching down in Jezero Crater, NASA's Perseverance rover has already cached 6 samples that could one day be brought back to Earth. Astrobiologists hope they hold signs of past microbial life.
Members of NASA's Perseverance rover team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation, have been naming features of scientific interest with words in the Navajo language.
The NASA rover traversed some 21 feet of terrain this week, in its first test drive since landing on the red planet. It also captured photos of its touchdown site and the wheel tracks it left behind.
NASA released new video showing the Mars rover Perseverance's landing and touchdown on the Red Planet as well as other images it has transmitted back to Earth.
Following a 300 million-mile voyage through space and a dangerous drop to the surface, Perseverance will be put through its paces before getting to a search for ancient Martian life.
Perseverance, set to land on the Red Planet on Thursday, is carrying the most sophisticated robotic biology lab ever launched and a drone meant to make the first-ever powered flight on another world.
China's space agency, fresh off a successful sample-return mission to the moon, says the ambitious Tianwen-1 rover mission it launched in July had reached the Red Planet.
NASA is sending a six-wheeled rover to Mars to look for signs of microbial life stored in the rocks at Jezero crater. The rover is also the first step in bringing samples of Martian rock to Earth.
