Inside NASA's Mars Rovers

NASA's rovers, from Sojourner to the 2020 Perseverance rover in 3D.

NASA's first rover on Mars was modest: Sojourner, the size of a microwave oven, demonstrated in 1997 that a robot could rove on the Red Planet. NASA's next Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were each the size of a golf cart. After landing in 2004, they discovered evidence that the planet once hosted running water before becoming a frozen desert. The car-sized Curiosity rover landed in 2012. Curiosity discovered that its landing site, Gale Crater, hosted lake billions of years ago and an environment that could have supported microbial life. Perseverance aims to take the next step, seeking, as a primary goal, to answer one of the key questions of astrobiology: Are there potential signs of past microbial life, or biosignatures on Mars?

This demanding science goal requires a new suite of cutting-edge instruments to tackle the question from many angles. The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, which can detect organic matter, and the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), which measures the composition of rocks and soil, will allow Perseverance to map organic matter, chemical composition and texture together at a higher level of detail than any Mars rover has done before. These instruments — two of the seven total onboard — will play a particularly important role in Perseverance’s search for potential signs of life.

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Landing Animations

[oofcloof]

The newer rovers are much more capable, but spirit and opportunity’s designs are so nostalgic. I hope they’ll send another one of these to mars in the future, probably to pick up Percy’s soil sample caches

[j.m.]

Opportunity❤Spirit and Opportunity were perfect, they can't be beaten IMO. So sad the're both gone now. Curiosity and Perseverance are great, too, though.

[ronfroehlich]

Why can we develop the ability to send a machine to a distant planet and control it remotely, but not develop traffic lights that change from red to green when a vehicle is approaching with no opposing traffic, or when four cars are sitting there with no opposing traffic?

[ActualGab]

This video is underrated


2 years ago and still epic

[aresiaq]

One minute of silence for Opportunity ❤️

[maryartistmime]

ACTUALLY WE LOVE ❤ ALL ROVERS 🇺🇲
BUT BECAUSE OF PERSERVERENCE ....
'PERCY' CONNECTED TO HELICOPTER
INGENUITY WE ARE CHOOSING IT FOR OUR
FAVOURITE👍
WE LOVE ALL YOUR VIDEOS & DOCUMENTARIES ♥️
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR SHARING 👌
LOVELY GREETINGS FROM GERMANY 🇩🇪
GODSPEED BLESSINGS FOR YOU ALL 🙏 GOD BLESS AMERICA 🇺🇸

[regolith]

Nice video but you used the wrong animation for the Curiosity (MSL) section. 4:56 That's Perseverance, not Curiosity. Percy has much straighter wheel treads instead of the zig zag treads. And 5:03 shows Percy's landing target, Jezero Crater. And finally at 5:12 you can see the Ingenuity helicopter stowed on the rover's underbelly.

[misterjayatgmx]

Nice video, thanks! Do you create your 3d models yourself and stuff? Great videos anyway

[alexflynnbaker]

Percy, curiosity or soujerner I can’t decide

[prayuthdvfjdvnjdcd]

I only like curiosity because I see a video about it landing and goes

[TharunSwag]

I am still wondering why the best video didn't get much like it is less the 400 I pray for u your youtube channel's subscriber should increase

[FinkipGirl]

2020:
9:26 “if successful”
Present day:
Ingenuity: *Laughs in 50 flights*

[bnbcraft]

It'd be cool if they could send a large drone to mars to explore valles marineris (aka the largest canyon in the solar system)

[godzillacarlshorts]

But spirit and oppurtunity are perfect but can never agree to leave😭😭🌌🌠

[d.o.m.]

All the rovers lined up look like an evolution chart for some weird alien lifeform.

[Kais]

I LIKE SPIRIT OPPY CURIOSOTY AND PERCERVANCE

[johnjones]

Thanks for adding a human being for scale (because everyone is not ~UP&up~about the dimension of these space vehicles, whether it be rovers or satellites. Sometimes just adding a human figure even just a toddler standing next to a tricycle, it will give “real perspective” to the enormity and ingenuity- engineering- of these animatronic complex brainstorming feat- baffling, vehicles. 😵‍💫🐌🥸👀