NASA Mars rover celebrates one year of accomplishments

The NASA Perseverance rover marked its one year anniversary on Mars on Friday.

The rover landed on Feb. 18, 2021 in the red planet's Jezero Crater, which was once a lake, and has since racked up a series of accomplishments, including new distance records, said NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

JPL outlined “Percy’s” accomplishments in a blog post, such as how it was the first to collect rock core samples from another planet, test a prototype oxygen generator on Mars and successfully deploy an unmanned helicopter drone named Ingenuity.

On Feb. 14, Perseverance broke the record for the most distance driven by a Mars rover in a single day by traveling almost 1,050 feet (320 meters) using AutoNav, its self-driving software, to maneuver around rocks and other obstacles.

Perseverance is about the size of a car and about one ton (1,025 kilograms), making it the heaviest rover to touch down on Mars. Its primary missions are to collect geological samples to search for fossilized remains of ancient Martian bacteria and other microscopic life forms and test the environment for future manned missions.

“Landing on Mars is always an incredibly difficult task and we are proud to continue building on our past success,” said JPL Director Michael Watkins after the rover’s successful landing last year. “But, while Perseverance advances that success, this rover is also blazing its own path and daring new challenges in the surface mission. We built the rover not just to land but to find and collect the best scientific samples for return to Earth, and its incredibly complex sampling system and autonomy not only enable that mission, they set the stage for future robotic and crewed missions.”