Mars Perseverance Rover Landing on Mars February 18, 2021

On February 18, 2021, a team of women and men at NASA successfully landed the Perseverance Rover on the planet Mars. The Perseverance Rover and accompanying Ingenuity helicopter were launched from Earth on July 30, 2020 and touched down on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021 at 3:55pm EST. The Mars 2020 mission was led by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The success of the Mars mission builds on the successes of previous American trailblazers like John Glenn, the first American to circle Earth’s Orbit, which he circled three times in 1962, as well as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first humans to land on the moon, which they successfully completed aboard Apollo 11. Approximately 6 hours after landing, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969.
Even the mistakes and lessons learned from the Apollo 13 “Houston, we have a problem” mission have helped prepare us for the success of the Mars 2020 and 2021 mission. As a reminder, the Apollo 13 mission was the mission where the astronauts were not able to touch down on the moon because of oxygen and electrical power generation problems. However, the crew was still successful in returning to Earth, alive. The scenario which unfolded aboard the Apollo 13 mission was even turned into the 1995 adventure drama movie, “Apollo 13,” starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Ed Harris.
This type of human achievement, ranging from Apollo 11 to Apollo 13 to the recent successful Mars 2020 mission, including the human-history shattering landing of the Perseverance Rover on the planet Mars is only possible when humans of all political parties, of all creeds and passions, from all walks of life, from all ethnic backgrounds, consider one another as friends and neighbors, without suspicion and mistrust, and collaborate together toward a common goal.