Mars 2020 Mission

Mars 2020 will transmit a series of tones directly to Earth in X-band during descent to provide information on key mission events.

Three core samples collected by Perseverance from the Margin unit and one core sample from the Bright Angel formation are awaiting return to Earth via the forthcoming Mars Sample Return mission.

The four projects SLS, Exploration Ground Systems, Mars 2020, and SGSS accounted for $638,000,000 of a $646,700,000 net cost increase among NASA projects in development in 2017.

The Mars 2020 heat shield, a pathfinder based on the Mars Science Laboratory design, cracked during testing earlier in the month at a Lockheed Martin facility.

Mars 2020 is developing improved parachutes after concerns raised by failures on NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator project.

NASA’s fiscal year 2019 budget requested $50,000,000 to support work on future missions after the Mars 2020 rover with an emphasis on planning for missions that will collect and return samples cached by Mars 2020.

NASA estimated Mars 2020’s cost at $2,100,000,000 plus $300,000,000 for its first Martian year of operations at Key Decision Point C in 2016.

NASA indicated it was unlikely to remove an instrument from Mars 2020 because most hardware was already built, integrated, and being tested and removing an instrument would offer limited savings at a late development stage.

NASA held discussions with Armstrong Flight Research Center and Wallops Flight Facility about using NASA aircraft to fly necessary personnel to the Mars 2020 launch site if commercial aviation is not available.

NASA’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal estimates the cost to develop the Mars 2020 mission at nearly $2.04 billion, an increase of 21.4% from the 2017 baseline estimate.

United Launch Alliance is building an Atlas V rocket for NASA’s $2,400,000,000 Perseverance rover mission to Mars.

United Launch Alliance is providing the Atlas V rocket to launch Mars 2020.

NASA used agency aircraft to ferry personnel and equipment to Kennedy Space Center to reduce risks of coronavirus exposure from commercial flights during Mars 2020 pre-launch preparations.

NASA's fiscal year 2021 budget proposal included a first-guess cost of $2.5–3 billion for future Mars sample return missions beyond Mars 2020.

Mars samples collected by Perseverance are planned to be returned to Earth no earlier than 2031 by two subsequent missions planned in cooperation with the European Space Agency.

NASA’s Mars 2020 mission includes a radioisotope thermoelectric generator power source using plutonium provided by the Department of Energy.

Thomas Zurbuchen previously estimated NASA’s cost for the later phases of Mars Sample Return would be $2,500,000,000 to $3 billion, excluding the $2,400,000,000 already spent on Mars 2020 and ESA’s estimated contribution of 1,500,000,000 EUR.

The Atlas V 541 configuration has launched missions for the National Reconnaissance Office, carried the GOES-R and GOES-S satellites, and most recently launched the Mars 2020 mission with the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter.

The Department of Energy produced the heat source plutonium oxide required to fuel the radioisotope power system for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission.