Video: New Horizons phone home will confirm health of spacecraft

The Perseverance rover’s sterilized sample tubes — designed to seal Martian rock and sediment for eventual return to Earth — are installed on the spacecraft as teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepare to enclose the rover inside the payload shroud of its Atlas 5 launcher for liftoff July 20.

Closing out an automated 18-hour rendezvous, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship loaded with 7,000 pounds of supplies and equipment, including two add-on roll-out solar blankets, caught up with the International Space Station early Tuesday and moved in for a problem-free docking.

NASA’s Perseverance rover will soon release a small rotorcraft onto the surface of Mars and drive a safe distance away to observe a series of historic test flights in the ultra-thin Martian atmosphere, which could begin around April 8, officials said this week.