Matt Wallace, deputy project manager for Mars 2020 who worked on the Sojourner rover, views Ingenuity as analogous to Sojourner.
Mars 2020’s landing will feature the same entry, descent, and landing sequence often called the “seven minutes of terror” experienced by the Curiosity rover in 2012.
NASA decided in May 2018 to fly the helicopter on the Mars 2020 mission with the support of then-Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
The Mars 2020 mission cost $2,700,000,000.
NASA will deploy Ingenuity early in the Mars 2020 mission for flight tests after the Perseverance rover lands.
MOXIE faced development challenges that raised questions about whether it could be completed in time to fly on Mars 2020.
Some scientists on the Mars 2020 team opposed including Ingenuity because they argued the helicopter tests would take time away from rover operations during the mission's initial phases.
NASA’s InSight lander is equipped to record the acoustic and seismic impact of several parts of the Mars 2020 rover’s EDL sequence but is not equipped to record the actual landing itself.
Mars 2020 will use a landing system similar to the one used by the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars in 2012.
Telemetry from Mars 2020 will be relayed through a pseudo bent-pipe via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter during entry, descent, and landing, providing the most data through landing.
Mars 2020 will transmit a series of tones directly to Earth in X-band during descent to provide information on key mission events.
Mars 2020’s landing system includes terrain relative navigation that compares images taken during descent to an onboard map to guide the spacecraft to a safe landing zone.
NASA deferred a decision on changing MRO’s orbit until after the landings of the InSight mission in November 2018 and Mars 2020 in February 2021.
A decision on whether to change MRO’s orbit to support Mars 2020 is scheduled to be made in the coming months following the Mars 2020 landing.
The Mars 2020 mission team is finishing final checkouts of the lander’s EDL system and will perform a cold boot of the rover’s computer system to ensure it matches its ground-tested counterparts.
Mars 2020 will cache samples in support of a broader Mars Sample Return program in which Perseverance’s cached samples will be collected and returned to Earth on two later missions launching no earlier than 2026.
Jim Bridenstine planned to watch the Mars 2020 rover landing and the Artemis 1 launch following his departure from NASA.
The Mars 2020 mission will cost NASA $2,700,000,000 through its first Martian year of operations.
An ESA-provided fetch rover would collect samples cached by the Mars 2020 mission.
The Mars 2020 rover, Perseverance, may deliver samples to the Mars Sample Return lander.