NASA’s Perseverance rover is locked and loaded

• NASA has loaded its new Perseverance rover onto the rocket bay that will carry it all the way to Mars.
• The launch is currently slated for sometime between July 30th and August 15th, which is the hard cut-off date for a Mars mission launch.
• If NASA would somehow miss its date due to a delay, it would have to wait until 2022 to launch the mission.

NASA's Perseverance rover — the star of its Mars 2020 mission — has seen its share of worrying setbacks in recent weeks. The mission has been delayed three times now, each one pushing the expected launch date back by a few days at a time. Despite that, things are still on track for a launch within the next month.

Now, as a sign that things are still coming together, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reveals in a new blog post that the Perseverance rover has been strapped to the top of the Atlas V rocket that will deliver the push to send the shiny new hardware to the Red Planet.

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NASA’s Perseverance rover is locked and loaded originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 9 Jul 2020 at 16:34:03 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.