Update on NASA Mars Rover Plans - The Planetary Society (blog)
The Mars 2020 rover will be the sixth rover on Mars following the tiny Sojourner rover in 1997, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers (the latter still going strong), the Curiosity rover now at Mars, and the European-Russian Mars 2018 ExoMars rover. Each succeeding rover becomes more progressively focused on exploring the past and present habitability of the Red Planet. Instruments selected for the Mars 2020 rover On the mast are upgraded versions of instruments on Curiosity: Mastcam-Z (color, stereo, 3D, zoom-capable cameras). On the arm are PIXL, an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and imager, and SHERLOC, a Raman spectrometer and imager. The news begins with the rover systems/project update. The Curiosity rover carried on the bottom of the rover body to look down and shoot a movie of the descent and landing (for a refresher on that movie, see here ). Currently, there is no plan to have a similar camera for the 2020 rover (but see below). Full-resolution front hazcam view of Curiosity's landing site, sol 0 Curiosity sees two wheels on soil, its shadow in front of it, a dark line of sand dunes, and a bright hill of the Gale crater central mountain in this photo taken from its front... In addition to the two stereo zoom science cameras (the Mastcam-Z cameras), the 2020 rover will carry a number of engineering. Source: www.planetary.org
