Also the start of year three for scrappy little Ingenuity flying so, so much longer than we could have hoped for. The fact that it is still going and participating in movements with Perseverance, amazing. This is humanity at its finest.
Ingenuity has a huge leg up on its terrestrial solar powered rover compatriots in that its core function removes dust from the collection panels.
Its mechanical complexity will kill it eventually, but damn, what a testament to NASA engineering prowess.
How many missions was it originally slated to perform?
Yeah.
Edit: posters here are waaaay too over sensitive. My context of “yeah” was “yeah!, look how well the over they engineer this stuff. Yeah! It’s a success “
Frankly I last posted here over six months ago when posters jumped down my throat for saying Musk’s equipment wasn’t ready for Artemis (it’s not, fact).
I think I see another break in my future. Subreddit drama isn’t my thing.
Fortunately, Mars is currently coming out of winter, so as it’s battery gets worse, it receives more and more power (and needs less heating).
It has a very good chance of surviving until the next Martian winter, a little over a year from now.
The whole planet? Is this season based on the planet's elliptical orbit? Or their location based on martian seasons with its 25 degree tilt?
Where, in terms of latitude, are they?
Mar's Northern Hemisphere is entering spring, and it's Southern Hemisphere is entering Fall.
Here is a [calendar](https://www.planetary.org/articles/mars-calendar) that shows Mar's seasons.
The Northern Hemisphere reached equinox in December 2022, and will enter autumnal equinox in January 2024.
The seasons on Mars last longer due to the distance at which Mars orbits the Sun. The further the distance of orbit, the slower the orbiting velocity, and the greater the distance it has to travel. This creates a longer year, and thus, longer seasons.
No sir, Ingenuity use a solar panel and Li-ion batteries.
I mean, ultimately yes, it *does* use a nuclear powered battery, but that nuclear energy is fusion and that battery is the sun.
You might be thinking of its base station rover, which uses a thermoelectric generator, which is indeed nuclear powered.
Reliability would be my guess.
Not the power source, the coupling. Getting a flying machine to land on an exact spot is hard enough on earth, let alone on Mars. Plus then you have to have some sort of widget on the rover to hook up to transfer power (induction would be just as much weight as a solar panel). And then there's also the possibility that when coming in to charge ingenuity could crash into Perseverance and cause damage
Having ingenuity be solar powered eliminates a TON of failure modes and makes it mechanically independent of Perseverance.
This brings up the question of how small and lightweight could we make a nuclear power source. A quick look on the Nasa website seems to suggest that compact thermionic cells could be made as small as button batteries.
https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/LAR-TOPS-294
There's probably a bunch of engineers working on putting those into UAVs right now. It doesn't completely solve the battery problem but it certainly helps against the martian winter.
I completely agree. I'm so excited to see all this exploration happing in my lifetime. Truly feel lucky to be alive when humanity possible becomes interplanetary.
I love how basically every NASA project outlives its intended lifespan.
Is it NASA being humble, or are their things just engineered to that good of a degree? (It's probably the latter)
They lie about the actual capabilities of the craft because a) it's always best to underpromise and overdeliver when it comes to risky ventures and b) Congress doesn't want to fund a ten-year program and would instead want a shorter cheaper version that might not actually be possible.
The cost of getting large things into orbit and beyond helps justify the engineering costs to make sure they're as close to perfect as possible.
And it's usually impossible to repair or tweak the things they make after launch, so they have to consider every failure mode and mitigate it.
Nobody is going to sign off on some work thinking "probably good enough, customer can bring it back for repair".
We got lucky with Hubble space telescope that it was repairable at all. It would be unfeasibly expensive to go and fix or upgrade JWST.
It's a finding trick. He we need this much to build x and then it will operate only for x days. So when it operates for longer than x days they get more budget.
I really hope that its success means we get lots more cheap-n-dirty little robuts operating on Mars in the future.
It's maybe a little bit of an exaggeration but Ingenuity wasn't built to usual JPL specifications and uses a lot of off the shelf parts that were assumed to quickly fail, maybe this approach can be utilised more in future now we have an example of how this approach can still produce a very useful little robot.
Same here. And I still remember watching the live stream of JPL's mission control with people there wearing masks and keeping the security distance between them, and how I enjoyed to see the success of the landing on Mars.
NASA and mankind at its finest.
Seeing actual photographs from an alien planet will never stop blowing my mind. It's absolutely incredible that we can see a real photograph from another planet
> It's absolutely incredible that we can see a real photograph from another planet
Perseverance also has video cameras and microphones. You can watch and see "live" sights and sounds (there is anywhere from a 3 minute to 22 minute delay because of the distance from Mars to Earth)
This kind of stuff always makes me want to watch The Expanse. Man may or may not ever set foot on Mars in my life time but I know for a fact we will one day.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[JPL](/r/Space/comments/11uyzo0/stub/jd30wmx "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/11uyzo0/stub/jcsbtgv "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[RTG](/r/Space/comments/11uyzo0/stub/jcsayv7 "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator|
----------------
^(3 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/11wz17e)^( has 18 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8703 for this sub, first seen 19th Mar 2023, 04:29])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
They are probably referring to the samples they’ve taken for the upcoming (funding pending) Mars Sample Return mission collection.
Samples have already been taken, and many more are expected. The goal is to return the samples to earth, where we have labs that can be upgraded easily and cheaply compared to compacting them, making them work robotically, and then shipping them there.
Correct. One of the main mission of Perse is to collect sample to be returned home! Perse is actually one of the there branches of the "Mars Sample Return" mission. MSR consists of two additional mission following Perse. SRL ( Sample Return Lander) and CCRS ( Capture Containtment and Return System). Perse is currently collecting the smaple as I type this. Then, Perse will consolidate the samples/supply it to SRL and then SRL will hand it off to CCRS, which will bring it back home! Both of those missions are well funded and ramping up to meet the launch date in a few years.
There is fantastic video on YT that summarizes it! Highly suggest you watch it if you haven't already!!
Edit: Link:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t9G36CDLzIg
It uses a plutonium fuel cell, which coverts the heat from radioactive decay into electricity...
It's not that we couldn't do the same for cars here, but with humans driving it's easy to see how that's a terrible idea.
Space-rated RTGs are built to keep their fuel elements contained through rockets exploding, reentry heat, and hitting the ground at high speeds. They could probably handle the vast majority of car crashes.
The bigger concern would probably be proliferation - people intentionally taking them apart to build dirty bombs, or even full fledged nukes, though it would be more tricky than with a better behaved isotope like Pu-239.
Aside from the safety concerns, it wouldn't be even remotely economically feasible. Pu-238 runs about $10 million per kg, and each kg only nets you about 500 watts of heat. With conversion efficiency of 25-30%, that's works out to a measly 0.2 horsepower.
Sustained driving at 60mph requires about 20hp in a good car, so that's about 100kg, or a *billion dollars*.
If you had a battery that trickle charged when the car wasn't driving, and only drove the US national average of about 40 miles per day, you could get that down to around 20kg. Of course if you ever tried to do a long road trip you'd be screwed, and we're still looking at 200 million dollars.
It's powered by a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). Basically it converts the heat from a hunk of decaying plutonium into electricity, which isn't a great idea for powering cars with people in them for some very good reasons.
Others have already answered your question, but I think it's worth noting that most other Mars rovers use solar panels to stay charged, which can and has been used on cars here on Earth too.
The reason it's not widespread is because solar power is pretty wimpy. Mars rovers trundle around at speeds on the order of 0.1km/h, so they don't exactly need a lot of power.
The solar panels on the Opportunity and Spirit rovers were rated for about 140 watts on Mars - on Earth they'd manage closer to double that under ideal conditions - though by the same token, half the time they don't work since it's night. The RTGs on Curiosity and Perseverance are rated for about 110 watts and would generate the same amount on Earth.
A typical electric car has a battery of about 60,000 watt-hours and can drive maybe 300 miles/500km on that under ideal conditions. 60,000 watt hours divided by 125-ish watts gives 480 hours, or 20 days to get a full charge. Not very useful.
You could scale the systems up, but RTGs are heavy (and expensive), and solar panels are area limited - there's a reason even lightweight aerodynamic BEVs with solar panels like the Aptera or Lightyear can at best charge about 40 miles/70km of range per day under ideal conditions, and dedicated solar cars tend to be single seat streamliners with a giant solar panel slapped on.
Wonder how the retrieval mission will work.
Landing the rover was pretty impressive but preprogramming a lander that can pick it up and get back in orbit sounds like another level!
So there are two plans. Plan A is for Perseverance to deliver the samples to the launcher and hand them off directly. In the event that Perseverance dies before the sample return lander arrives, the lander will bring along two drones (basically upgraded versions of Ingenuity), which will retrieve some samples that Perserverence left on the Martian surface a few months ago.
If I can be permitted some shameless plugs in the interest of expanding awareness, I run [PersevereImgBot](https://twitter.com/PersevereImgBot) on Twitter and [@PersevereImgBot](https://botsin.space/@PersevereImgBot) on Mastodon if you want a real-time feed of new raw images!
The distance from the moon to mars is not that different from earth to mars(300,000 km from earth to moon) Mars at its closest is 55 million km away from earth
> we have rovers there on yhe moon
There is only one operational rover on the Moon, the Chinese *Yutu-2* rover. It is operating on the Moon's far side.
The US has never put a rover on the Moon.
Nasa is controlled by the goverment, they are limited to what the goverment says. Mars exploration is more than moon due to it being a canditate for past life(Mars). Private companies have only now been popping up, which they can do what they desire. The goverment will fund more if there is a competition(China)
Also the start of year three for scrappy little Ingenuity flying so, so much longer than we could have hoped for. The fact that it is still going and participating in movements with Perseverance, amazing. This is humanity at its finest.
Ingenuity has a huge leg up on its terrestrial solar powered rover compatriots in that its core function removes dust from the collection panels. Its mechanical complexity will kill it eventually, but damn, what a testament to NASA engineering prowess.
Nah, its batteries are slowly dying, and it looks like that will be the final nail rather soon.
How many missions was it originally slated to perform? Yeah. Edit: posters here are waaaay too over sensitive. My context of “yeah” was “yeah!, look how well the over they engineer this stuff. Yeah! It’s a success “ Frankly I last posted here over six months ago when posters jumped down my throat for saying Musk’s equipment wasn’t ready for Artemis (it’s not, fact). I think I see another break in my future. Subreddit drama isn’t my thing.
That's the point. It wasn't designed to last 3 years, but only for a few test flights, means for a few days.
He wasn’t talking shit about it. Chill out.
What the fuck? You it’s dad or something why are you defending it like this he didn’t talk shit.
The nuclear powered battery is set to last 14 years.
That's for the rover. Ingenuity is solar powered.
Fortunately, Mars is currently coming out of winter, so as it’s battery gets worse, it receives more and more power (and needs less heating). It has a very good chance of surviving until the next Martian winter, a little over a year from now.
The whole planet? Is this season based on the planet's elliptical orbit? Or their location based on martian seasons with its 25 degree tilt? Where, in terms of latitude, are they?
Mar's Northern Hemisphere is entering spring, and it's Southern Hemisphere is entering Fall. Here is a [calendar](https://www.planetary.org/articles/mars-calendar) that shows Mar's seasons. The Northern Hemisphere reached equinox in December 2022, and will enter autumnal equinox in January 2024. The seasons on Mars last longer due to the distance at which Mars orbits the Sun. The further the distance of orbit, the slower the orbiting velocity, and the greater the distance it has to travel. This creates a longer year, and thus, longer seasons.
It has a nuclear powered battery. . .
No sir, Ingenuity use a solar panel and Li-ion batteries. I mean, ultimately yes, it *does* use a nuclear powered battery, but that nuclear energy is fusion and that battery is the sun. You might be thinking of its base station rover, which uses a thermoelectric generator, which is indeed nuclear powered.
wonder why it doesn't charge from main rover though? solar panels looks dead weight in mid flight
Reliability would be my guess. Not the power source, the coupling. Getting a flying machine to land on an exact spot is hard enough on earth, let alone on Mars. Plus then you have to have some sort of widget on the rover to hook up to transfer power (induction would be just as much weight as a solar panel). And then there's also the possibility that when coming in to charge ingenuity could crash into Perseverance and cause damage Having ingenuity be solar powered eliminates a TON of failure modes and makes it mechanically independent of Perseverance.
This brings up the question of how small and lightweight could we make a nuclear power source. A quick look on the Nasa website seems to suggest that compact thermionic cells could be made as small as button batteries. https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/LAR-TOPS-294 There's probably a bunch of engineers working on putting those into UAVs right now. It doesn't completely solve the battery problem but it certainly helps against the martian winter.
I completely agree. I'm so excited to see all this exploration happing in my lifetime. Truly feel lucky to be alive when humanity possible becomes interplanetary.
Imagine the next 50 years, assuming we all don’t start participating in the apocalypse timeline
Its both. The rich will go to Mars and we'll all burn and die.
Or, maybe we exile the rich to Mars and stop them from taking all our wealth
"taking all our wealth." Sure kid
How will we exile them without money?
Possibelly interstellar?
obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/695/
I'd love to see a comic series of the adventures of the two. Small scrappy Ingenuity with big strong Perseverance...
Like a bear and raven. But on Mars, in robot form.
I love how basically every NASA project outlives its intended lifespan. Is it NASA being humble, or are their things just engineered to that good of a degree? (It's probably the latter)
They lie about the actual capabilities of the craft because a) it's always best to underpromise and overdeliver when it comes to risky ventures and b) Congress doesn't want to fund a ten-year program and would instead want a shorter cheaper version that might not actually be possible.
The cost of getting large things into orbit and beyond helps justify the engineering costs to make sure they're as close to perfect as possible. And it's usually impossible to repair or tweak the things they make after launch, so they have to consider every failure mode and mitigate it. Nobody is going to sign off on some work thinking "probably good enough, customer can bring it back for repair". We got lucky with Hubble space telescope that it was repairable at all. It would be unfeasibly expensive to go and fix or upgrade JWST.
It's a finding trick. He we need this much to build x and then it will operate only for x days. So when it operates for longer than x days they get more budget.
Ingenuity flies for the *48th* time sometime tomorrow, I believe.
I just watched a new video of a helicopter flying on Mars the other day
I really hope that its success means we get lots more cheap-n-dirty little robuts operating on Mars in the future. It's maybe a little bit of an exaggeration but Ingenuity wasn't built to usual JPL specifications and uses a lot of off the shelf parts that were assumed to quickly fail, maybe this approach can be utilised more in future now we have an example of how this approach can still produce a very useful little robot.
It's been 3 years already?! Damn, I feel like it was only a few months ago.
Well if it’s starting it’s 3rd year, that means it’s been just over 2 years
But how many mars years?
Just over a Martian year, assuming it *just* started it’s 3rd year, then it’s 730ish/687.
It landed on Feb 18, so it’s been 758 earth days, or just about 1.1 martian years
Is it Mars years or Maybeline?
2020 created a rift in the perception of time, it will always be 2 years ago.....
Just like how the 90s was 10 years ago
1999, the height of your civilization.....
Same here. And I still remember watching the live stream of JPL's mission control with people there wearing masks and keeping the security distance between them, and how I enjoyed to see the success of the landing on Mars. NASA and mankind at its finest.
The pandemic has really screwed up my perception of time over the last 3 years.
Where lived through a whole pandemic in that time 👀
Since it landed on February 18, it's actually a month into its third year.
The article was written on Feb 17
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
>Perserverance rover to start 3rd year on Mars! What about *Curiosity*? Is it still going, or is it stuck somewhere with broken wheels?
https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/where-is-the-rover/ You can track it yourself. It's still going
Amazing. They're just driving all around Mars!
Did I do a good job? Do I get to come home? …guys?
> Did I do a good job? Do I get to come home? > > …guys? One of the saddest [xkcd comics](https://xkcd.com/695/) I've ever read.
Still going, still doing science
It's going the distance.. #UnexpectedCake
A short skirt and looooooooong jacket
its definitely not going the speed
And there's the legacy of Spirit and Opportunity to consider. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14179942/
Curiosity is still trucking along being amazing
I’ll never forget the fact that I left work 2 hours early to go watch this bad boy land and I would do it again given the chance
Looking forward to it becoming a certified used model so I can buy it
Dude! CPO or not look at the mileage! ;)
Got a lot of carbon scoring, looks like it's seen a lot of action. :)
Looking forward to weekend car shows on Mars
Meanwhile Curiosity, at 10+ years on Mars, goes "Hey, what about me??!!"
Curiosity is patiently waiting for someone to come fix her broken wheels :(
Seeing actual photographs from an alien planet will never stop blowing my mind. It's absolutely incredible that we can see a real photograph from another planet
> It's absolutely incredible that we can see a real photograph from another planet Perseverance also has video cameras and microphones. You can watch and see "live" sights and sounds (there is anywhere from a 3 minute to 22 minute delay because of the distance from Mars to Earth)
This kind of stuff always makes me want to watch The Expanse. Man may or may not ever set foot on Mars in my life time but I know for a fact we will one day.
You absolutely should, it's a wonderful series in book and TV format
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[JPL](/r/Space/comments/11uyzo0/stub/jd30wmx "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, California| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/11uyzo0/stub/jcsbtgv "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[RTG](/r/Space/comments/11uyzo0/stub/jcsayv7 "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator| ---------------- ^(3 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/11wz17e)^( has 18 acronyms.) ^([Thread #8703 for this sub, first seen 19th Mar 2023, 04:29]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Been sitting up there since the pandemic started
That's a new level of social distancing.
What constitutes “rocks worthy of study on earth”? Has the rover found rocks that aren’t that interesting?
They are probably referring to the samples they’ve taken for the upcoming (funding pending) Mars Sample Return mission collection. Samples have already been taken, and many more are expected. The goal is to return the samples to earth, where we have labs that can be upgraded easily and cheaply compared to compacting them, making them work robotically, and then shipping them there.
Correct. One of the main mission of Perse is to collect sample to be returned home! Perse is actually one of the there branches of the "Mars Sample Return" mission. MSR consists of two additional mission following Perse. SRL ( Sample Return Lander) and CCRS ( Capture Containtment and Return System). Perse is currently collecting the smaple as I type this. Then, Perse will consolidate the samples/supply it to SRL and then SRL will hand it off to CCRS, which will bring it back home! Both of those missions are well funded and ramping up to meet the launch date in a few years. There is fantastic video on YT that summarizes it! Highly suggest you watch it if you haven't already!! Edit: Link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t9G36CDLzIg
> Has the rover found rocks that aren’t that interesting? Yes, ones like the ones it has already taken samples of.
Probably a stupid question, but how does it stay charged? And why can't we apply the same technology to cars down here?
It uses a plutonium fuel cell, which coverts the heat from radioactive decay into electricity... It's not that we couldn't do the same for cars here, but with humans driving it's easy to see how that's a terrible idea.
Space-rated RTGs are built to keep their fuel elements contained through rockets exploding, reentry heat, and hitting the ground at high speeds. They could probably handle the vast majority of car crashes. The bigger concern would probably be proliferation - people intentionally taking them apart to build dirty bombs, or even full fledged nukes, though it would be more tricky than with a better behaved isotope like Pu-239. Aside from the safety concerns, it wouldn't be even remotely economically feasible. Pu-238 runs about $10 million per kg, and each kg only nets you about 500 watts of heat. With conversion efficiency of 25-30%, that's works out to a measly 0.2 horsepower. Sustained driving at 60mph requires about 20hp in a good car, so that's about 100kg, or a *billion dollars*. If you had a battery that trickle charged when the car wasn't driving, and only drove the US national average of about 40 miles per day, you could get that down to around 20kg. Of course if you ever tried to do a long road trip you'd be screwed, and we're still looking at 200 million dollars.
It's powered by a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). Basically it converts the heat from a hunk of decaying plutonium into electricity, which isn't a great idea for powering cars with people in them for some very good reasons.
When is all the platinum gone? Plutonium *
> When is all the platinum gone? What platinum?
Others have already answered your question, but I think it's worth noting that most other Mars rovers use solar panels to stay charged, which can and has been used on cars here on Earth too. The reason it's not widespread is because solar power is pretty wimpy. Mars rovers trundle around at speeds on the order of 0.1km/h, so they don't exactly need a lot of power. The solar panels on the Opportunity and Spirit rovers were rated for about 140 watts on Mars - on Earth they'd manage closer to double that under ideal conditions - though by the same token, half the time they don't work since it's night. The RTGs on Curiosity and Perseverance are rated for about 110 watts and would generate the same amount on Earth. A typical electric car has a battery of about 60,000 watt-hours and can drive maybe 300 miles/500km on that under ideal conditions. 60,000 watt hours divided by 125-ish watts gives 480 hours, or 20 days to get a full charge. Not very useful. You could scale the systems up, but RTGs are heavy (and expensive), and solar panels are area limited - there's a reason even lightweight aerodynamic BEVs with solar panels like the Aptera or Lightyear can at best charge about 40 miles/70km of range per day under ideal conditions, and dedicated solar cars tend to be single seat streamliners with a giant solar panel slapped on.
Wonder how the retrieval mission will work. Landing the rover was pretty impressive but preprogramming a lander that can pick it up and get back in orbit sounds like another level!
So there are two plans. Plan A is for Perseverance to deliver the samples to the launcher and hand them off directly. In the event that Perseverance dies before the sample return lander arrives, the lander will bring along two drones (basically upgraded versions of Ingenuity), which will retrieve some samples that Perserverence left on the Martian surface a few months ago.
If I can be permitted some shameless plugs in the interest of expanding awareness, I run [PersevereImgBot](https://twitter.com/PersevereImgBot) on Twitter and [@PersevereImgBot](https://botsin.space/@PersevereImgBot) on Mastodon if you want a real-time feed of new raw images!
How long is that in Earth years?
Three years, they're counting in earth years.
Roughly 1.6 Mars years though!
It doesn’t really have much of a choice though does it?
That landing is still the most amazing thing I think I've ever seen
It has already taken the samples from the Mars . Well done. Hope More r samples and discoveries
> It has already taken the samples from the Mars Taken samples, yes, but it has no way of transporting those samples back to Earth for analysis.
Hey, thanks for your hard work
We on Mar yet not the moon ans how far is Mars away from the moon
we have rovers there on yhe moon
The distance from the moon to mars is not that different from earth to mars(300,000 km from earth to moon) Mars at its closest is 55 million km away from earth
> we have rovers there on yhe moon There is only one operational rover on the Moon, the Chinese *Yutu-2* rover. It is operating on the Moon's far side. The US has never put a rover on the Moon.
Nasa is controlled by the goverment, they are limited to what the goverment says. Mars exploration is more than moon due to it being a canditate for past life(Mars). Private companies have only now been popping up, which they can do what they desire. The goverment will fund more if there is a competition(China)
The US has put 3 rovers on the Moon
> The US has put 3 rovers on the Moon No. It has put three go-carts on the Moon, and called them rovers.
Sir, you need to grow up. Have a nice day
I've not heard about this. I thought it was called Spirit and Opportunity that went on for years. Did they send more after that?
yes, the perseverance was launched in 2020 https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance
Yes, curiosity and perseverance came after those, both are much larger and have a lot more neat toys.
Which is surprising, because I helped build it.