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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Selfie With Mars 2020 in JPL's High Bay

Selfie With Mars 2020 in JPL's High Bay
Selfie With Mars 2020 in JPL's High Bay NASA is preparing the Mars 2020 rover for a July 2020 launch as well. In this 5 June 2019 photo, engineers take a selfie after attaching the remote sensing mast. Like its predecessor Curiosity and its contemporary Rosalind Franklin, the Mars 2020 rover (which will receive a more colloquial name before launch) is able to drill to acquire samples. Unlike the other missions, Mars 2020 plans to package and drop those samples for future retrieval and return to Earth. The work it does on the surface with cameras and spectrometers will document the geologic context of the samples, making them a rich prize for future science in Earth laboratories if Earth can successfully retrieve them. NASA / JPL-Caltech