How NASA Mars Rovers Evolved in 25 Years of Exploring the Martian Surface

NASA started exploring Mars from space in the 1960s, although most people's attention was on the moon landing at the time. The Mars Perseverance rover joined Curiosity on Mars sometime in the summer of 2020. The two rovers, which were both created by JPL (which Caltech oversees for NASA), have a lot in common in terms of design. However, they serve different purposes in the ongoing investigation of Mars and the hunt for extraterrestrial life.

Continue reading to learn about the history of the rovers that sought to study life on Mars.

Mariner and Viking - 1960s

NASA launched orbiters like Mariner and Viking in 1965 to collect up-close photos and data, The Weather Channel said in one of its YouTube videos. One of the mission's most perplexing findings was that the planet's surface temperature was much lower when the atmosphere was dustier.

Astronomy.com said Mariner 9 crew members Carl Sagan and his first graduate student Jim Pollack, a specialist in planetary atmospheres, were among those who studied these findings.

Researchers combined Mariner 9 data with surface information gathered a few years later by the Viking landers and information on Earth's surface temperatures following significant volcanic eruptions. The purpose is to create models explaining how dust suspended in a planet's atmosphere cools the surface while simultaneously warming the upper atmosphere.

NASA said the Viking mission was supposed to last another 90 days after landing. Each orbiter and lander ran much over its intended lifespan. While Viking Orbiter 2 operated until July 25, 1978, Viking Orbiter 1 continued for four years and 1,489 Mars orbits, ending its mission on August 7, 1980.

Viking Lander 1 sent its last communication to the planet on Nov. 11, 1982. The final data from Viking Lander 2 reached Earth on April 11, 1980.

NASA Perseverance Rover Lands On Mars — UNSPECIFIED: In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA's Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve in the area known as Jezero crater on the planet Mars. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith. NASA via Getty Images

Sojourner (1997)

Mission commanders at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, aimed to defy the odds and successfully land a spacecraft on the Red Planet early on July 4, 1997.

That tiny robot, a six-wheeled rover dubbed Sojourner, succeeded in its mission 25 years ago and became the first of many rovers NASA developed and ran to explore Mars. NASA has examined the Red Planet with four more rovers, each more advanced and powerful than the last one. On Aug. 5, the spacecraft known as Curiosity celebrated its tenth year of exploration. Another, called Perseverance, is occupied with gathering rocks that will eventually be recovered and brought back to Earth by robots. With the landing of its own rover, Zhurong, last year, China entered the Mars exploration game.

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Spirit and Opportunity Rovers (2004)

NASA's Spirit and Opportunity robots geologists launched in an effort to learn more about the origins of water on Mars on June 10 and July 7, 2003. On Jan. 3 and Jan. 24 PST, 2004, they made landings on Mars (January 4 and January 25 UTC, 2004).

The NASA Mars Exploration Program, a long-term robotic exploration expedition of the red planet, includes the Mars Exploration Rover mission.

One of the mission's main scientific objectives is to find and describe a variety of rocks and soils that may contain information about previous water activity on Mars. Sites on different sides of Mars that appear to have been impacted by liquid water in the past are the focus of the spacecraft's travels. The two landing locations are Gusev Crater, which may have once been a lake, and Meridiani Planum, where mineral deposits (hematite) indicate Mars formerly had liquid water.

Curiosity Rover (2012)

The Curiosity rover from the Mars Science Laboratory mission made an unprecedented series of intricate landing maneuvers to touch down in Gale Crater on Mars on the evening of Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (dawn of Aug. 6, EDT).

NASA said the engineers tested landing procedures used during earlier rover missions could not safely accommodate the much larger and heavier rover, necessitating the development of a specialized landing sequence that utilized a giant parachute, a jet-controlled descent vehicle, and a bungee-like apparatus called a "sky crane,"

The goal of Curiosity is to ascertain whether microbial life has ever been able to survive on the Red Planet. The rover, roughly the size of a MINI Cooper, has 17 cameras and a robotic arm outfitted with a variety of specialist lab-style tools and equipment.

Perseverance Rover (2020/2021)

The centerpiece of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 project, Perseverance, landed in the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021. The car-sized robot will do a number of ambitious tasks once it is fully operational, including gathering several dozen samples for eventual return to Earth and looking for signs of former microbial life.

Space.com said the Perseverance rover from NASA isn't only studying Mars. If all goes as planned, the life-hunting robot will also aid in the transfer of a small portion of Mars to Earth in around 10 years.