NEW ORLEANS — NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is continuing its mission to collect samples despite uncertainty about how, when or even if those samples will be returned to Earth.
At a press briefing during the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) here Dec. 17, project officials said the rover, which landed in Jezero Crater nearly five years ago, is in good condition as it ascends out of the crater.
“Perseverance is really in excellent shape,” said Steve Lee, deputy project manager for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The rover is capable of supporting this mission for many, many years to come.”
Perseverance’s primary mission has been to collect samples to be returned to Earth on later missions as part of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. Bringing the samples back would allow scientists to study them in far greater detail than is possible with instruments on the rover, including searching for evidence of past life on Mars. NASA announced in September that one such sample showed the most promising evidence yet of past Martian life.
However, plans to return the samples remain uncertain. After analyzing cost and schedule overruns in the MSR effort, NASA announced in January that it would study two alternative MSR concepts through mid-2026. The agency’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, though, called for canceling the program.
There have been few public updates on the status of MSR since then. At the September briefing on the potential evidence of past life, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, then NASA’s acting administrator, said the agency had identified a way to conduct MSR faster and at lower cost but did not provide details. A NASA planetary science town hall at the AGU Annual Meeting Dec. 17 did not mention MSR.
At the AGU briefing, Lee said the uncertainty surrounding MSR has not affected ongoing rover science operations. “We are continuing the mission,” he said, including planning the next two years of activities as the rover reaches the crater rim. “There are quite a number of very prime and juicy targets we’d love to go explore.”
Perseverance has six remaining tubes available for collecting samples. In addition, two tubes that already contain samples remain unsealed, giving scientists the option to replace those samples with new ones.
“This is a very capable in situ science rover. We have a tremendous suite of instruments to be able to do very detailed investigations,” Lee said. “There’s a lot to keep us busy.”
Mission scientists agreed. “The rim itself is such a great place to explore these ancient terrains,” said Briony Horgan, a scientist at Purdue University working on the mission. She noted that the impact that created Jezero Crater uplifted ancient rocks beneath the surface, exposing them like a roadcut on Earth.
As part of an extended mission, the project has been working to increase the certified driving distance for the rover. Perseverance was designed to travel at least 20 kilometers, but Lee said it has already driven more than 40 kilometers. Ongoing testing of the rover’s mobility system, including its wheels, actuators and brakes, is intended to confirm it can travel at least 100 kilometers.
That target distance, Lee said, was based on planning conducted two years ago during MSR architecture studies, when NASA began considering alternatives in which Perseverance would deliver samples directly to a lander rather than rely on a separate fetch rover. Those concepts included an extended exploration of the crater rim before returning to a rendezvous site with a sample return lander.
“We did an estimate of the total mission drive distance to complete that mission, added margin for science exploration and added margin in case we needed to rendezvous at a different site,” he said. “It just turned out to add up to a nice, even 100 kilometers.”