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This Week at NASA | This Week @ NASA: Landing Site Selected for Mars 2020 Mission

Uploaded 11/26/2018

This Week @ NASA: Landing Site Selected for Mars 2020 Mission

A landing site is selected for our next Mars rover … Our InSight mission is in the home stretch of its journey to the Red Planet … And a week of celebration on the space station … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

NASA Selects Landing Site for Mars 2020 Rover

On Nov. 19, we announced that, after a five-year search that included more than 60 candidate locations on Mars, Jezero Crater has been selected as the landing site for our upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission.

Voice of: NASA Associate Administrator for Science, Thomas Zurbuchen:
“This decision today could determine what happens in the next decade or more of Mars exploration – both robotic and human. The technologies that we prove here feed forward into a program that gets ever more exciting.”

The mission is scheduled to launch in July 2020 as the next step in exploration of the Red Planet: It will not only look for signs of ancient habitable conditions and past microbial life, but will also collect rock and soil samples that could be retrieved for return to Earth by a potential future Mars mission.

Landing of InSight Mission on Mars Set for Nov. 26

A series of news briefings on Nov. 21 focused on the upcoming landing on Mars of InSight, our next mission to the Red Planet, and our first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012. The InSight lander is scheduled to touch down on Nov. 26 at approximately 3 p.m. EST. We’ll carry live coverage of the event on NASA Television, on nasa.gov and on the agency’s social media platforms. InSight will be the first spacecraft to study the Red Planet’s deep interior to help us better understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including Earth.

20th Anniversary of Space Station’s First Module

It was a busy week – full of celebration aboard the International Space Station. On Nov. 20, the crew celebrated the 20-year anniversary of the 1998 launch of the Russian-built Zarya module – the first element of the space station. Meanwhile, our Serena Aunon-Chancellor and her space station crewmates Alexander Gerst of ESA and Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev, were busy welcoming a couple of resupply vehicles. A Russian Progress spacecraft arrived with cargo on Nov. 18, followed by Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft – which arrived on Nov. 19 with about 7,400 pounds of research and supplies.

Happy Thanksgiving From Expedition 57

Aunon-Chancellor and Gerst also recorded a video message to talk about the crew’s plans for Thanksgiving dinner.

ESA Astronaut, Alexander Gerst:
“And this … is our turkey.”

Along with Russian colleague Sergey Prokopyev, their plans included a little down time from their daily activities to reflect on the things for which they are thankful.

NASA Astronaut, Serena Aunon-Chancellor:
“From the crew of Expedition 57 – from our home to yours – we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving.”

That’s what’s up this week @NASA …

(c)2018 NASA | SCVTV
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