It is the most sophisticated robotic explorer that humans have yet launched. Thanks to its explorations and experiments, it has increased our knowledge of another planet more than just about anything we’ve ever managed to launch from Earth. Five years into its mission, this rover continues to provide valuable scientific data. And thanks to its durable construction, we expect it to serve us for many more years to come.
After all, this rover isn’t called Perseverance for nothing.
The latest in a line of ingenious and hardy Martian robotic explorers, the vehicle dubbed Perseverance — or “Percy,” as it’s known to its friends — was sent off to our planetary neighbor as the main payload of the Mars 2020 mission. When it launched in July of that year, the compact-car-sized rover was loaded to the gills with all of the latest diagnostic and analytical tools that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could cram onto its 2,300-pound, 6-wheeled, aluminum and titanium chassis.
Those tools have yielded exciting results. Over the next few years, Perseverance would complete numerous analyses of the Red Planet's geology and climate and log some impressive firsts for Mars exploration. Unfortunately, it would also eventually experience a major setback when one of its most important tasks was postponed indefinitely.
Explore All OptionsSo, where exactly is the Perseverance rover right now and what is it up to?
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On the Lookout for Life
Perseverance landed in February 2021 at Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-diameter impact site on the Martian surface likely caused by an asteroid or comet about 4 billion years ago. Once on site, the rover immediately got down to, well, roving.
It also had some experiments to conduct during its travels around Jezero, including the launch of a small, autonomous helicopter named Ingenuity, the first of its kind to fly on another planet. Perseverance also carried a device dubbed MOXIE, which it used to successfully generate oxygen from the abundant carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere, an important proof-of-concept task to demonstrate that future astronauts and explorers could potentially harvest oxygen on-site for their life-support and fuel needs.
But the rover’s primary mission has always been to look for signs of ancient microbial life, as well as evidence of whether Mars’ past environment could sustain life. This is why NASA researchers selected Jezero as a landing site: About 3.5 billion years ago, the crater filled with water and became a prehistoric lake fed by a river delta.
While Mars’ surface lakes and rivers are long gone (at least in liquid form), traces of ancient water remain trapped in minerals on the surface. Because water is essential for supporting life, NASA determined that the lake bed and river delta would be a promising place to search for chemical or fossil evidence of ancient microbial life.
The rover is equipped with drilling tools to extract samples from the Martian landscape, as well as instruments that can perform some chemical analyses on site. With this capability, Perseverance made an important discovery in July 2024, identifying a potential biosignature in a sample: organic molecules and certain minerals strongly associated with the presence, at some point in time, of microbial life.
The discovery, published in Nature in 2025, electrified the scientific community on Earth, including experts on the rover’s science team. Still, although NASA administrators called the findings “incredibly exciting,” more research is needed, according to study co-author Melissa Rice, a member of the Perseverance team, long-term planner of the rover’s mission, and professor of planetary science at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
“As exciting and surprising as these findings were, it’s still not incontrovertible evidence of life,” Rice told Discover.
Although the molecules Perseverance found strongly point to the possibility of ancient microbial life on Mars, they could also have formed by non-biological means.
“We need to know more. Much more,” Rice said. “And the best way we can determine if these samples are actual biosignatures is to get the rocks back to Earth.”
Read More: A Resilient Fungus Could Survive the Trip to Mars — and Possibly Other Planets
How Perseverance Could Send Martian Samples Back to Earth
As part of an ambitious next-phase exploration on Mars, Perseverance was designed to gather and store samples in special containers. These could be cached on the surface of the planet or stored in the rover itself for the unprecedented feat of collecting and sending those samples to Earth.
Bringing samples back here was planned as part of a new multi-phase mission known as Mars Sample Return (MSR). As a joint operation by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), MSR, as originally conceived, would require several steps to complete the mission successfully, including building key vehicles and equipment that are still largely in the planning stages.
First, the MSR team would send a special lander to rendezvous with Perseverance to collect the samples (or possibly launch an Ingenuity-type helicopter to fly out and grab them). Then, the lander would put the payload on a small ascent vehicle or rocket that would launch the samples into orbit, where they would be collected by yet another vehicle, the appropriately named Earth Return Orbiter, which would finally shepherd the samples back to Earth.
The Chinese National Space Administration has also pursued its own sample return mission, Tianwen-3, expected to launch in 2028. If all went according to plan, both missions were expected to return Mars rock samples to Earth sometime in the 2030s.
Unfortunately, at least for the NASA/ESA mission, things have not gone according to plan.
Perseverance has already done its part, gathering more than two dozen samples, some of which the rover has cached on the surface, while others are stowed onboard. But back on Earth, costs for the rest of the MSR mission have already been an issue.
At the beginning of 2026, the U.S. Congress passed a spending bill that eliminated funds for the sample return program, which was deemed prohibitively expensive and could cost as much as $11 billion, according to one report by an independent review board.
As for those samples? They may be stranded on Mars at present, but Rice said, “It’s not the end of the line yet. We have to play the long game here.”
While funding for the MSR mission as originally conceived may have gone away, Rice believes NASA, ESA, and possibly future partners can engineer a less costly solution.
Where’s Percy Now?
Meanwhile, Perseverance keeps on rolling. It is still at Jezero, where it has traveled about 28 miles to date and was designed to travel at least 60 miles over its operational lifespan. NASA maintains an interactive map where you can see the rover’s progress through the crater and its current location.
“There’s no predetermined endpoint to its mission,” Rice told Discover.
The rover is still looking for signs of life and still has the capacity to collect more samples for possible future collection.
“Perseverance was built for the long haul. It will keep going for as long as NASA can keep operating it,” Rice said. “And I’m optimistic that we will see those samples someday, somehow.”
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Ingenuity
- This article references information from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: NASA’s Oxygen-Generating Experiment MOXIE Completes Mars Mission
- This article references information from a study published in Nature: Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars
- This article references information from a study published in Nature Astronomy: In search of signs of life on Mars with China’s sample return mission Tianwen-3
- This article references information from the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Independent Review Board-2 Final Report
- This article references information from NASA: Where is Perseverance?
- This article references information from NASA: Mars Sample Return
