Accelerate progress in our three core enterprises — Explore Worlds, Find Life, and Defend Earth. You can support the entire fund, or designate a core enterprise of your choice.
Mars explorers The MER scientists and engineers gathered for a team portrait during the rovers’ prime
mission on Mars in 2004 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, original home to all NASA’s
spacecraft at the Red Planet. The team has evolved. As people moved on, second and third
generations of engineers and scientists joined the adventure. But once a MERtian, always a
MERtian. “All of you made this happen, this phenomenal legacy of exploration and scientific
discovery,” Callas wrote in a touching email to the team just before the end of mission was
declared. “You created these machines. You were the custodians of this enterprise that for
the first time exceeded a marathon's distance on another world. You enabled this rover
to survive winter after harsh winter. It was you who overcame hardware failures and
capability loss to keep this machine enduring and productive. But we could not make them
last forever. Though these rovers are magnificent machines, they, like us, are mortal.” NASA/JPL-Caltech