Landing on Mars… teamwork

Mapping helps choose the most interesting and safest landing site. Rockets send probes towards Mars. SpaceX, based in California and Texas, is developing Starship rockets for future human journeys. Rovers move across the surface to study Mars, while their controllers work remotely. They are designed, built and operated at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. JPL operates forty space missions at once, with an annual budget of 2.4 billion dollars. Its founders included Hungarian-born Theodore von Kármán, its first director during the Second World War.