News Planetary Science

Meet Perseverance, NASA’s newest Mars rover

The newly named rover will land in a dry river delta in February 2021

The next NASA Mars rover, Perseverance, took its first drive in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The rover is set to launch to the Red Planet in July.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

By Lisa Grossman

Meet Perseverance, NASA’s next ambassador to the Red Planet.

The Mars rover’s new name was announced March 5, after a six-month “Name the Rover” competition that drew more than 28,000 entries from students in kindergarten through high school.