Roving with Perseverance

While NASA’s Perseverance rover is hard at work exploring Mars hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, a 1/10th scale model has found a temporary home at the Edelman Planetarium at Rowan University! As part of the Mars 2020 mission, the Perseverance rover is searching for “signs of ancient microbial life” and exploring “the past habitability of Mars” by drilling into the Martian surface to collect and store rock and soil samples for further study on Earth (https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/overview/).
 
Get a close-up look at Perseverance’s six-wheeled look-alike in our desktop-sized model, take a selfie on Mars with our Perseverance and Ingenuity Selfie Station, and get a feel for the size of Perseverance with a full-scale model of one of its wheels.

Roving With Perseverance is a set of materials to tell the story of the Perseverance rover and its mission to discover signs of ancient life on Mars. It is on loan from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The exhibit includes the Perseverance rover table-top model, a wheel replica, and the “Mars 2020 Mission Kit” with rock and mineral samples, a sample tube replica, and swatches of spacecraft materials. Also included are a 12” Mars globe showing the landing sites of previous Mars exploration rovers and an 8-foot by 10-foot “selfie station” featuring an image of the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter on Mars.
 
Visiting schools can get a hands-on education program about Mars exploration using the Mars 2020 Mission Kit and Perseverance exhibit added to their field trip at no charge. Field trips to the Edelman Planetarium are funded by a continuing grant from our founding members, Ric and Jean Edelman, and cover school admission costs to visit. Other groups may add the program to their visit for an additional fee of $5 per person.