Safekipedia

Mars rover

Adventurer · ages 7–10Adapted from Wikipedia
NASA's Curiosity rover takes a self-portrait at the 'Big Sky' site on Mars, where it drilled into rock to study the planet's history.

A Mars rover is a vehicle that is driven by remote control and built to travel across the surface of Mars. Rovers have some advantages over stationary landers. They can explore more land, be sent to interesting features, and move into sunny spots to get through the winter months. They also help scientists learn how to control robotic vehicles from very far away. Rovers do a different job than orbiting spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and a newer idea is the Mars helicopter. This article is about robotic vehicles. For vehicles that carry people, see Crewed Mars rover.

As of May 2021, six robotic Mars rovers had been successful. The first five were run by the American NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the order they landed on Mars, they were Sojourner (1997), Spirit (2004–2010), Opportunity (2004–2018), Curiosity (2012–present), and Perseverance (2021–present). The sixth was run by the China National Space Administration. It is Zhurong (2021–2022).

NASA's Curiosity rover, selfie, 2015

On January 24, 2016, NASA reported that ongoing studies by Opportunity and Curiosity would look for signs of ancient life on Mars. This could include a biosphere built by tiny microorganisms. The rovers would also look for ancient water, including fluvio-lacustrine environments. These are plains linked to ancient rivers or lakes that may have been habitable. Searching for signs that a place could support life, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic carbon on Mars has become a main goal for NASA.

Early Soviet probes, Mars 2 and Mars 3, were physically connected to their landers by cables. Sojourner relied on the Mars Pathfinder base station to talk with Earth, while Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity worked on their own. As of August 11, 2026, Curiosity is still active. Spirit, Opportunity, and Sojourner finished their missions and then lost contact. On February 18, 2021, Perseverance, the newest American Mars rover, landed successfully and remains active as of August 11, 2026. On May 14, 2021, China's Zhurong became the first rover from outside the United States to work successfully on Mars.

Missions

See also: List of missions to Mars

The Curiosity rover, part of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012. It is still working as of September 2026. It explores the Aeolis Palus plain near Aeolis Mons, which people often call "Mount Sharp." The Perseverance rover is based on Curiosity's design. It landed on February 18, 2021, as part of the Mars 2020 mission and carried the Mars helicopter Ingenuity. Ingenuity's mission has ended, but Perseverance is still working. Earlier rovers include Sojourner, which landed with Mars Pathfinder in 1997. Spirit and Opportunity came from the Mars Exploration Rover mission. Spirit's wheels got stuck in sand. Opportunity set records for how long a rover worked, but a 2018 Mars dust storm blocked the sunlight it needed. NASA declared the mission complete in 2019. China's Zhurong rover, part of Tianwen-1 from the CNSA, landed in Utopia Planitia in 2021. It was turned off in 2022 because of sandstorms and winter. Dust on its solar panels stopped it from restarting.

Some missions did not succeed. The Soviet Mars 2 landing failed, and its PrOP-M rover was destroyed. The rovers were meant to move on skis while connected to their landers by cables. The Mars 3 rover landed in 1971, but its lander stopped communicating about 110 seconds after landing, and the rover was lost. ESA's ExoMars rover, Rosalind Franklin, was ready for launch in 2022, but its launch is delayed until at least 2028. ISRO has proposed a Mars rover as part of the Mars Lander Mission in 2030. The Mars Tumbleweed Rover is a wind-powered, ball-shaped rover. A team plans to land 90 of them by 2034. Other ideas were not developed. These include Marsokhod for Mars 96, the Astrobiology Field Laboratory, Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher, the Mars Surveyor 2001 rover, the JAXA Melos rover, and the Mars Geyser Hopper.

Timeline of rover surface operations

Examples of instruments

Curiosity's (MSL) rover "hand" featuring a suite of instruments on a rotating "wrist". Mount Sharp is in the background (September 8, 2012).
Opportunity's first self-portrait including the camera mast on Mars(February 14−20, 2018 / sols 4998−5004). It was taken with its microscopic imager instrument.
Mars Landing Sites (December 16, 2020)

Here are some tools that rovers carried to Mars:

NASA Mars rover goals

Around the 2010s, NASA set goals for its rover program. NASA sorts these goals into two kinds: "mission" goals and "science" goals. Mission goals are about progress in space technology and how the work is done. Science goals are met by the instruments that work during the mission in space. The science instruments were chosen and built to meet these science goals. The main goal of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers was to explore "the history of water on Mars".

The four science goals of NASA's long-term Mars Exploration Program are:

Panorama of Husband Hill taken by the Spirit rover (November 2005)

Pictures

Three generations of NASA Mars rovers stand side by side at JPL's Mars Yard, from the small Sojourner rover on the front to the much larger Curiosity test rover on the right.
A 360-degree view from the Mars rover Spirit as it descended Husband Hill in 2005, showing the rocky Martian landscape and the rover's tracks leading toward its next destination.
A computer rendering of the PrOP-M, a Soviet rover designed to explore the surface of Mars.
A side-by-side look at the wheels of three Mars rovers: Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, and Curiosity. Curiosity's wheels are the largest of the three.
Three Mars rover models side by side: the Sojourner rover (center), the Mars Exploration Rover (left), and the Mars Science Laboratory mockup (right), which carries the Curiosity rover.
The Zhurong rover and the Tianwen-1 lander on Mars, photographed by a camera on the mission's orbiter.
A selfie taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars, with its companion helicopter, Ingenuity, visible in the frame.
The Rosalind Franklin rover, a robot designed to explore Mars and search for signs of past life.
A view of the planet Mars, with wispy clouds drifting through its thin atmosphere.

Keep exploring

Perseverance (rover)
NASA
Mars
Robot
Biosphere
Microorganism

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Mars rover, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Images from Wikimedia Commons. Tap any image to view credits and license.