NASA's Perseverance Rover Gains Millions of Twitter Followers Since Landing on Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover has its own Twitter account, and it has amassed more than 2 million followers since landing on Mars on February 18th.

On that day alone, 752,943 people followed the account amid its high-profile touchdown on the surface of the red planet, according to the social media tracking website Socialblade.

The account, which is run by a five-person team who work for NASA, tweets as though the rover itself is writing. The team have said they aim to give the 1,000kg robot a personality.

When the rover landed on Mars and beamed its first photo back from the surface, the account tweeted: "Hello, world. My first look at my forever home." The tweet gained nearly 1 million likes and over 225,000 retweets.

Since then the rover's account has posted a number of other photos that the vehicle has taken with its on-board cameras.

Captioning one photo that showed some rocks on the Martian surface, the account tweeted: "I love rocks. Look at these right next to my wheel. Are they volcanic or sedimentary? What story do they tell? Can't wait to find out."

The team behind the Twitter account have said they try to make the rover different from the other robots that have gone to Mars before it.

Stephanie L. Smith, digital and social media lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a member of Perseverance's Twitter team, told USA Today: "If Perseverance is anything, she's a boss. She's the biggest, most ambitious rover we've ever sent to the surface of another planet."

Carolina Martínez, a member of the team and manager for Mars public engagement at NASA, added: "That personality sort of becomes self-evident and very recognizable to us as we work closely with the mission team."

The team also makes it seem as though Perseverance interacts with other accounts linked to spacecraft, including NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or HiRISE, which takes photos of the red planet's surface from space.

On Monday, the Perseverance account tweeted: "Thanks for looking out for me, HiRISE. Long before I got here, you helped map this place out."

HiRISE took a photo of Perseverance at its landing site almost a week after the rover touched down on the surface of Mars.

The account first posted on March 5, 2020, with a tweet that read: "Call me Perseverance. I'm headed for Mars: driven to search for signs of ancient life, test new tech to help future human explorers, and collect the first rock samples for future return to Earth."