The Mars 2020 mission transporting Perseverance launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on July 30, 2020, and is scheduled to land at its destination in February 2021. Track and travel with Perseverance using a visualization tool prepared by NASA based on the trajectory data used to plot the mission’s course.

Eyes on the Solar System lets users gauge the distance between Mars and the spacecraft at any time. The program is based on real-time data and imagery from NASA spacecraft and incorporates data going back to 1950 and projected to 2050. Location, motion and appearance are based on predicted and reconstructed mission data.

Upon arrival, the rover and the on-board will search signs of past microscopic life on Mars and explore the geology of its landing site, which is the Jezero Crater. It will also demonstrate technologies that can help prepare future missions for both robots and humans.

Until that time, armchair astronomers may also want to explore their home planet with Eyes on the Earth and visit distant worlds with Eyes on ExoPlanets. Or use their computer to help NASA's Curiosity rover better navigate Mars: Volunteers are needed to label terrain in images taken by rovers and train an artificial intelligence algorithm to automatically read the landscape.

NASA's Eyes on the Solar System tool lets users track the spacecraft in real time as it makes its way to Mars for a February 2021 landing. Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech