NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Robotic Arm Is on the Move (Time-lapse)

In this time-lapse video, taken July 19, 2019, in the clean room of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the rover's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm handily maneuvers 88 pounds (40 kilograms) worth of sensor-laden turret as it moves from a deployed to a stowed configuration.

The rover's arm includes five electrical motors and five joints (known as the shoulder azimuth joint, shoulder elevation joint, elbow joint, wrist joint and turret joint). The rover's turret includes HD cameras, the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) science instrument, the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), and a percussive drill and coring mechanism.

JPL is building and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.