Mars rover Mars rover A Mars rover is a motor vehicle that propels itself across the surface of the planet Mars upon arrival. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, and they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. There have been four successful robotically operated Mars rovers. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed the "Sojourner" rover, the "Opportunity" rover, "Spirit" rover, and, now the "Curiosity" rover. On January 24, 2016 NASA reported that
Mars sample-return mission complexity and technical problems. One mission concept (provisionally named simply Mars Sample-Return) was originally considered by NASA's Mars Exploration Program to return samples by 2008, but was cancelled following a review of the program. A NASA-ESA concept mission was aborted in 2012. The United States' Mars Exploration Program, formed after "Mars Observer" failure in September 1992, supported a Mars sample-return. One example of a mission architecture was the "Groundbreaking Mars Sample-Return" by MacPhereson in the early 2000s. In early 2011, the National Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which laid out mission planning priorities for the period 2013–2022 at the