In a few days (~four) the Perseverance rover should land on Mars. In 2019, a year before launch, NASA’s communications team had a great idea to involve and connect with a larger audience: the MARS 2020 project (here). The pitch is quite simple and clever: send your name to Mars, and if you caught the first flight, you will travel with Brad Pitt. Cool, isn’t-it?

Now that they made space travel cool, behind the scene, NASA turned MARS 2020 into an opportunity to discover and learn about all the technologies and science required to carry out such mission. In particular, I found that they did a good job in hierarchizing the material, focusing on the general public, while making links available to access more detailed contents. This way, we all get what we are looking for.

By the way, if you missed this first trip to Mars, no worries, you can catch the next one, and the next one, and…

Brad Pitt shows off his boarding pass for Mars with Jennifer Trosper, the Mars 2020 project systems engineer and a veteran of several NASA Mars missions. Credit NASA/SPL-Caltech