• Tesla’s CEO just got $15 billion added to his name after the confirmed S&P 500 listing.
• Musk is on track to overtake Mark Zuckerbeg, Facebook CEO, as the third richest in the world.
• As per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Elon Musk is now worth $117 billion after the S&P 500 announcement on Monday.
• Tesla will be officially added to the list of S&P 500 components on December 21, 2020.

Elon Musk is now worth $15 billion more after S&P Global’s announcement last Monday of Tesla Inc.’s inclusion into its S&P 500 index. Musk is now closing in on Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s position as the third-richest in the world.

Tesla share price was $408.09 at market close on Monday. During the extended trading hours, however, the share price skyrocketed by 14% courtesy of the inclusion’s announcement.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO gained $90 billion in the year thus far; the biggest gain in 2020 amongst 500 listed billionaires. Musk’s current net worth is estimated at $117.5 billion, which should put him ahead of Zuck.

Note that Mark Zuckerberg has an estimated $106-billion net worth.

Musk’s $400-billion clean energy and electric vehicle company, Tesla, is set to be listed in S&P 500 on December 21 and join the ranks of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft as one of the 10 most valuable components of the index.

Tesla met the market-capitalization-weighted index’s requirements, which lists that components must be US-based, be at least $8.2-billion in market capitalization, posted four profitable quarters in succession, have high liquidity and half of the shares are publicly available.

S&P Global failed to disclose which company will lose its spot in the index in favor of Tesla; specifying a separate release regarding this detail.

On a separate note, Musk revealed that he was tested for Covid-19 four times on the same day during the weekend while questioning the reliability of the test due to mixed results.

Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2020

Tesla stock spiked during the extended session, which builds atop its 387% gain this year and the annual high recorded in August. An impressive feat for a company that only became profitable last year; as per its annual report back in January 2020.

The S&P Dow Jones Index announced just this Monday that the clean energy and electric vehicle company will be added to its list of components on prior to the markets opening on December 21, which meets the December quarterly rebalancing effective date.

Moreover, S&P DJI stated that Tesla will be among the biggest weight additions to S&P 500, a market-capitalization-weighted index, within the last 10 years. Consequently, S&P DJI sees Tesla generating one of the largest funding trades in S&P 500’s history.

Q3 of 2020, which saw a 105% rise in Tesla share prices compared 2019 Q3, marks the fifth straight profitable quarter for the Palo Alto-based company. The recorded $0.76 per share in this year’s 3^rd quarter blew the $0.57-cent estimate out of the water, which aligns with the reported total revenue of 8.77 billion – a 39% climb – outperforming the $8.36 forecast.

Analysts expects the electric-vehicle manufacturer to continue down this road of profitability for the rest of the year; posting its first straight year of profitability.

The stock’s recent advance, in part, can be attributed to the anticipation of the company getting listed on the index. This inclusion may lead investors that mirror the S&P 500 index to add shares of Tesla to their portfolios; a potential catalyst for the Tesla’s stock.

As per Thomson One Financial’s tracking, Elon Musk stands as Tesla’s largest individual shareholder. Behind him is Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO.

Musk maintains his position as the head of Tesla while simultaneously commandeering the tunneling and underground-transportation systems company, The Boring Company, and SpaceX, which, in collaboration with NASA, had a successful launch last Sunday.

? Enter the Crew Dragon. At 4:48 p.m. EST (9:48 p.m. UTC), the NASA @SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts give you a LIVE tour of their spacecraft Resilience: https://t.co/z1RgZwQkWS pic.twitter.com/0kn4gRnFma

— NASA (@NASA) November 16, 2020

Biden is on record lobbying for stronger regulations enforcement, which includes but is not limited to financial and labor regulations, on American manufacturers. This potential clampdown by way of better enforcement and, perhaps, additional regulations may prove to hinder the electric vehicle giant and its effervescent CEO, Elon Musk.

The upside is that the president-elect’s manufacturing and clean energy agenda may bear fruit to new government-backed incentives for domestic manufacturers, especially clean energy and electric vehicle companies like Tesla.

Moreover, the waters are further muddied by the fact that both Tesla bulls and short-sellers are in Biden’s list of significant fundraisers.

On one end are bulls like former Tesla board member Steve Westly while on the other are Tesla short-sellers such as Jim Chanos, founder of New York-based investment company Kynikos Associates.

Here’s what investors can expect in Joe Biden’s tenure as president.

The Clean Energy Initiative

Tesla has now been profitable for five straight quarters, which is attributed to environmental regulatory credit sales. In Tesla’s latest Q3 earnings report, the company listed a $397-million revenue from its credit sales.

Given the significance of these credit sales to Tesla’s profitability, it’s easy to see how policy changes across the board can have a big impact on the company’s financials.

Nonetheless, Tesla, along with other US-based vehicle manufacturers such as Lucid, General Motors and Rivian, may be able to find refuge within the policy goals for clean energy and manufacturing of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan.

Relevant policy goals are:

• Charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in the US – 500,000 more, at least
• Creation of a million new jobs within the U.S. auto industry
• Employing electric vehicles to replace the federal government’s fleet of vehicles, which includes vehicles used for postal service and other federal business
• Stricter emissions guidelines on the state-level for vehicles running internal combustion engines
• Becoming the world leader in electric vehicle manufacturing; surpassing China
• Offering rebate incentives for consumers to trade in vehicles that are less efficient for greener, newer vehicles made in the U.S. – similar to the Cash for Clunkers program of old
• An increase in battery-related R&D within the U.S.

Regulations and Unions

Biden’s agenda is leaning towards the benefit of Tesla’s vehicle business. Of course, it remains to be seen which of the president-elect’s policies materializes or if ever they can pass through, what seems to be, a divided congress.

Moreover, Biden’s policy goals also include unions and efforts to strengthen them, which Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, isn’t exactly enthusiastic about given his and Tesla’s recent clashes with the National Labor Relations board.

Note that back in 2019, Musk questioned, in a tweet, why should Tesla workers “pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing.” In a California administrative hearing in September of the same year, the judge found Tesla to have violated national labor laws as per Musk’s tweet.

Tesla was then instructed to hold a meeting in its car-assembly plant in Fremont, CA, with Musk, as the CEO, present and to inform the employees of their rights while divulging details of how the company had broken the law. Tesla is currently appealing the prior ruling.

Furthermore, a Biden administration, with its policy goals for stronger regulations enforcement, could potentially bring more scrutiny to the company granted its history with regulators and Musk’s recent provocation.

In 2018 both Musk and Tesla had to each settle $20 million with financial regulators after the CEO’s tweet of taking the company private, which sent the share prices through the roof. Moreover, the SEC has yet to respond (if it ever plans to respond) to Musk’s provocative tweet in July 2020.

Scrutiny of Tesla could perhaps bring to light its business practices for automated driver assistance and how these features are marketed to consumers. Both the NHTSA and FTC have yet to intervene or formally question Tesla regarding these matters.

Note that Tesla markets its vehicles’ automated driver assistance options as Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot, and Full Self-Driving. Despite the name implications, however, all of these options fail to deliver a totally hands-free driving experience.

For the time being, the NHTSA seems to be leaning in favor of Tesla and the innovations that come with the company’s electric vehicles and self-driving technology.

The auto-regulatory body has previously heard and investigated crashes involving Tesla vehicles including one in which Walter Huang, an Apple engineer, was killed. And while both the NHTSA and NTSB found faults in Tesla’s automated driver assistance and semi-autonomous driver technologies, a recall has yet to be issued.

James Owen, NHTSA Deputy Administrator, said that the regulations passed before the development of automated technologies should not present an “unintended and unnecessary barrier against innovation and improved highway safety.”

Improved regulations enforcement can change the status quo.

Technically, SpaceX could have tested the waters with a smaller Super Heavy prototype for the initial Starship orbital missions. Based on the purported images captured of the assembly, however, it seems that SpaceX has gone from the prototype directly into the development of a full-scale booster.

The Super Heavy Booster aft tank section was moved into the high bay at SpaceX Boca Chica. ??@NASASpaceflight https://t.co/9sTD7oIUwZ pic.twitter.com/f2M1lufvLV

— Mary (@BocaChicaGal) November 8, 2020

The second Super Heavy tank section has been stacked in the high bay. Yes, keep on stacking. ??@NASASpaceflight https://t.co/9sTD7p0vVz pic.twitter.com/019QAxTqO3

— Mary (@BocaChicaGal) November 8, 2020

The first booster rings, which were literally labeled as Super Heavy, surfaced back in September 22. In the span of approximately a month and a half, SpaceX’s factory in Boca Chica, TX, managed to produce close to 25 steel rings – at least 6 sections with each section comprised of 4 stacked rings – as per the images captured. Note that each completed booster is purported to need at least 40 steel rings.

SpaceX can fast-track the development and assembly of both the Starship and Super Heavy by utilizing almost identical hardware and tank design to two prior Starship prototypes. With this, the company is able to leverage its existing manufacturing infrastructure for most of Starship and Super Heavy. It is also purported that the next-generation booster is likely to be simpler than its upper stage, which is one of, if not the largest, reusable upper stage and spacecraft ever once completed.

Aerodynamics, internal header tanks, tiled heat shield and conical nose section aside, Super Heavy only has one major wall to climb – an engine section that can support up to 28 raptor engines. Simply put, granted that SpaceX successfully designs a thrust structure that can feed a 28-Raptor engine configuration, the Super Heavy could very well be realized in a much easier fashion than expected.

For just a booster hop you could probably get away with 3 or 6 Raptors only… But it’ll be a while before you have 2 dozen + similar and capable engines for an orbital booster, right?

— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) August 28, 2020

Regardless of their success and failure, however, Starship and Super Heavy will doubtlessly be the largest rocket booster, upper stage and spacecraft once completed.

The Super Heavy booster’s 28-Raptor engine configuration is purported to have a combination of high-trust Raptors (20) with limited throttle capabilities wrapping around the other 8 gimbaling engines that can be throttled. Albeit, Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, recently said that hop tests with the Super Heavy are possible with just two engines.

Granted that these 28 engines are operating at maximum capacity, this engine configuration is touted to produce 14.5 million lbs. (6,600 metric tons) of thrust during liftoff. This is two times as much as that of Soviet N- rockets and Saturn V; three times as much as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.

At approximately 230 ft. (70m), the Super Heavy, by itself, would be as tall as the Falcon Heavy, Falcon 9 and most of the operation rockets on the planet. When filled to capacity with methane propellant and liquid oxygen, the booster would come in at, roughly, 7.7 million lbs. (3500 metric tons).

To accompany the Super Heavy booster #1, which SpaceX officially named as “BN1”, is a 270-feet tall high bay, which should see a lot more activity in the days ahead. Without any major mishaps, the Super Heavy booster is expected to be completed within a couple of months; a month at the soonest.

The return was a spectacle to watch. The thrusters- the propulsive devices fitted into rockets- fired and the heat inside the capsule built up to a temperature of 3500 degrees Fahrenheit. Flames surrounded the spacecraft, blackening the once-white body and clouding the windows.

Despite this, Behnken and the astronaut who accompanied him, Doug Hurley, were comfortable and composed. They said that the mission was “flawless” during their first news conference since completing the test flight, on Tuesday.

Behnken said: “The atmosphere starts to make noise, you can hear that rumble outside the vehicle and as the vehicle tries to control you feel a little bit of that, that shimmy in your body.”

However, both of them were still “really, really comfortable coming through the atmosphere, even though it felt like we were inside of an animal,” he added.

Hurley said, “The vehicle was rock solid.”

The landing occurred in the Gulf of Mexico which is 39 miles south-east of Pensacola, Florida. This is a historical mission, the first spacecraft to be launched from the US in nine years (the last one being Apollo in 2011). This launch also made SpaceX the first ever private company to put humans in orbit. It began two months ago when Behnken and Hurley were launched in the Crew Dragon from the Kennedy Space Center to the ISS.

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk and headquartered in California, signed a contract with NASA to design rockets that can fly astronauts to space. Boeing, the American aerospace company, is also a part of this agreement.

Behnken and Hurley also said that the Crew Dragon has great strength and stamina, enduring a fiery ride that started at 17,500 mph and flew to 240 miles up into orbit, then plunged down into the sea.

During the return, the trunk- a module in the rocket that is unpressurized and is covered in solar arrays on one half- disconnected from the capsule. It then fired its thrusters, causing the “deorbit” burn, which defined the landing trajectory for the spacecraft. The parachute was also deployed, which brought the events to an end.

Behnken said, “All the separation events, from the trunk separation through the parachute firings, were very much like getting hit in the back of a chair with a baseball bat, you know just a crack.”

Once the spacecraft was in the water, recovery teams immediately got to work. They first made sure that the vehicle with safe, along with a crew of civilian boaters who floated dangerously close to the rocket that was loaded with propellant

Both NASA and SpaceX said that they must control the crowd better from next time.

However, the two astronauts inside the spacecraft didn’t know that there were so many people surrounding them and waiting to greet them, as the windows were murky because of the flames. “You could basically tell that it was daylight but very little else,” said Hurley. “So we didn’t really see anything clearly out the windows.”

They first brought out the satellite phone they were carrying to test whether or not it was working. The first person they called was to the console of the flight director at NASA’s mission control center in Houston.

“Hi, this is Bob and Doug,” the astronauts said. “We’re in the ocean.”

The flight director, Anthony Vareha, said, “Yeah, I can see that.” After the call was finished, a colleague suggested that he should have responded differently: “Oh, crap, was splashdown supposed to be today?”

After this call, Hurley and Behnken called their wives, who were also both astronauts.

“As all folks know that have gone through this, as a family member, you’re kind of helpless, until you hear the voice of your loved one on the other end,” said Hurley. “And this was a great chance to reassure them that we were in the water. We were okay.”

They boarded on the deck of the recovery ship after around thirty minutes. They were taken to the shore on a helicopter, where an airplane and a pizza party were awaiting.

The airplane took them to their home in Houston, Texas. They reunited with their wives and children, ready to return to normal life on Earth. And fulfil certain promises; for Behnken, this was getting his 6-year-old son a puppy.

However, they will first have a conversation about the responsibilities.

Behnken said that this son has to “show me that he’s ready to take on that responsibility.” “Otherwise, it’ll be my dog instead of his,” he added.

Musk was also critical of the policies implemented by New York and California, although these states have provided considerable support to his companies, mainly Tesla, with tax breaks and regulatory credits, among other things.

The interview was conducted by Jason Stein, who is also a publisher at Automotive News. He asked Musk, “How about China as an EV strategy leader in the world?”

His reply was as follows: “China rocks in my opinion. The energy in China is great. People there – there’s like a lot of smart, hardworking people. And they’re really — they’re not entitled, they’re not complacent, whereas I see in the United States increasingly much more complacency and entitlement especially in places like the Bay Area, and L.A. and New York.”

Musk’s views aren’t surprising given that China has greatly helped Tesla. Last year, the company received loans of around $1.6 billion from the Chinese government to start manufacturing vehicles at the recently constructed Shanghai factory. The Shanghai government helped the company mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and resume operations as soon as possible. This is post the lockdown it imposed in response to the pandemic, which caused Tesla to temporarily suspend its operations.

Musk also said that this company didn’t receive as much support from the government as domestic companies: They have been supportive. But it would be weird if they were more supportive to a non-Chinese company. They’re not.”

He praised the Chinese government and people despite his aversion towards communism. He expressed this in a tweet he posted on Monday, referring to social welfare schemes and Karl Marx’s ‘Das Kapital.’

Das Kapital in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/mG44mMkitx

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 27, 2020

In the Automotive News interview, Musk also commented that the US, California, and New York are similar to sports teams that might be losing their winning status. This is what he said:

“When you’ve been winning for too long you sort of take things for granted. The United States, and especially like California and New York, you’ve been winning for too long. When you’ve been winning too long you take things for granted. So, just like some pro sports team they win a championship you know a bunch of times in a row, they get complacent and they start losing.”

He further went on to lament that “Tesla has had the least government support of any car company” in the US.

He also said that Tesla repaid a loan to the US Department of Energy before the due date.

What he’s referring to is the loan given during Obama’s presidency. In June 2009, the Department of Energy provided Tesla with a loan of $465 million to construct automotive assembly plants in Fremont, California, and start manufacturing its all-electric sedan- the Model S. Tesla paid off this loan along with the interest before May 2013, which is nine years ahead of the due date.

This loan seems small when compared to the billions of dollars of TARP loans that were given to General Motors and Chrysler during the 2008 financial crisis.

Because of the recent that the American economy is currently facing, Tesla has been given other kinds of assistance from the US government as well. An analysis conducted by the Los Angeles Times concluded that the government assistance Tesla received in the US is well beyond $4.9 billion.

This includes more than $200 million in sales and use tax breaks, given by the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority. The state also awarded the company with credits for zero emissions and the use of solar renewable energy. These credits allowed Tesla to improve its profitability over the last four quarters.

In addition, Tesla also benefited from the assistance given by New York. The state spent around $959 million on a factory manufacturing solar panels in Buffalo, operated by Tesla. This was an attempt to boost tech and manufacturing jobs in the state.

The expenditure aimed to bring around 1000 of these jobs, but this head count was not met by Tesla yet. As per a recent filing, New York gave Tesla another year to achieve this goal. Otherwise, the company will have to repay $41 million to the state.

Moreover, Musk was also asked about Tesla’s share price skyrocketing by a whopping 240% this year. He said:

“It’s not worth trying to massage the stock market or manage investor expectations. It’s just. You know? At the end of the day, if you make great cars and the company’s healthy and making great products investors will be happy…If you make lousy products your customers will be unhappy and then your investors will be unhappy.”

He went on to offer advice to other business owners:

“My advice, you know, to corporate America or companies worldwide is spend less time on marketing presentations and more time on your product. Honestly that should be the number one thing taught in business schools. Put down that spreadsheet and that PowerPoint presentation and go and make your product better.”

He also thinks that direct-to-consumer car sales- in which consumers can place an order online and the company will deliver the goods directly to them- are the future of sales, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of brick and mortar stores, dealerships and showrooms may reduce. “Having a traditional dealer situation, I think, seems increasingly unnecessary and I think probably the pandemic just reinforced that,” he commented.

He said that Tesla received “strong orders through the whole pandemic.” The company reported its deliveries fell by around 5% and its sales by more than 30% in the second quarter of this year.

One of the ways in which Tesla is transitioning towards greater sustainability is through electrification. However, a single company- out of the thousands in the industry- can only have so much impact. This is why it needs to get other automobile manufacturers to make this move as well.

It seems that that is exactly what the company is trying to do. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweets make it clear that the company wants to collaborate with other companies in creating a more sustainable future.

Musk has always been vocal about the ‘higher purpose’ of his companies. With SpaceX, he wants to make space travel accessible to all people, and, not to mention, colonize Mars. With The Boring Company, he wants to make public transportation more efficient. Similarly, with Tesla, he wants to make electric cars the industry standard for automobiles, a step towards a more sustainable future.

As per Musk, crushing competition was never the goal of his company which is why it’s not surprising that the company is willing to join hands with competitors to forward its mission. It will mainly do this by supplying components that would allow the other companies to manufacture electric cars that are similar to Tesla’s. Given its authority in the market, becoming a supplier is not a far jump for the company.

“Tesla is open to licensing software and supplying powertrains & batteries. We’re just trying to accelerate sustainable energy, not crush competitors!” said Musk.

Tesla-obsessed German automakers look to solve multi-year tech deficit https://t.co/itnVJlFyh7

— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 29, 2020

Not only this, Musk also said in a following tweet that Tesla would also share its software with competitors. One example of such a software is Autopilot, an essential technology for creating self-driving cars. Tesla would benefit from such a partnership in other ways as well as it can gather driving data from these companies, which would allow it to further refine its Autopilot software.

This is not a recent idea: Musk had the idea to partner with competitor companies before. He said in 2018 that Tesla would be willing to let other companies use its Supercharger Network, as long as they pay costs commensurate with usage. The Network is a “moat” rather than a “walled garden,” he said.

Software as in autopilot?

— Sam lopez (@sam_lopezXx) July 29, 2020

This is what Musk has to say: “We’ve always said that this is not intended to be a walled garden, and we’re happy to support other automakers and let them use our Supercharger stations. They would just need to pay, you know, share the costs proportionate to their vehicle usage, and they would need to be able to accept our charge rate or at least our connector, at least have an adapter to our connector. This is something that we are very open to.”

But how many firms have actually reciprocated the company’s interest in a partnership? Well, so far, we only know of one: Bollinger Motors publicly requested Tesla to provide access to its Supercharger Network for its B1 and B2 vehicles. Tesla and Musk are yet to respond to this.

Although NASA has invested in several Mars missions before, this is probably its most ambitious one. It was announced in 2012 and the purpose of the mission was to study the planet at a deeper level than what has been done so far. The rover would mainly be collecting evidence that would be studied in laboratories on Earth to determine if Mars harbored microbial life in the past.

A similar was launched by NASA in the past. In 2012, the Curiosity rover landed on Mars to discover the mineral life on the planet. When the mineral samples that the rover brought were analyzed, scientists discovered that there may have been microbial life on the planet. It has since been eight years and NASA is now launching this new mission to find further evidence to support these claims.

One of the reasons why a new mission is being launched after so long is because the technology required for it is incredibly complex. The agency had to invest a lot of time- and money- into research and development as this technology has never been used before. As per NASA, the Perseverance rover is fitted with seven “state-of-the-art tools for acquiring information about Martian geology, atmosphere, environmental conditions, and potential signs of life (biosignatures).” It will be the first-ever rover to gather and store samples from the surface of Mars so that they can be later retrieved and brought back to Earth by astronauts on a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Another reason why the rover is a first of its kind is that it is equipped with high-definition cameras with top-notch imaging features. Not only this, but it will also have HD microphones to capture the sounds of Mars- another thing that has never been done before. The sounds that will be captured include entry, descent, landing, and driving on the terrain.

The rover will also carry two technological demonstration missions (TDMs) with it called MOXIE and Ingenuity. MOXIE stands for Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment which is designed to test the technology that can convert carbon dioxide to oxygen in Mars’s atmosphere. This is important as it would allow scientists to determine whether or not people can be sent to Mars. Ingenuity is a rotorcraft or helicopter that is capable of flying on Mars. It will also provide scientists with crucial information on the gravitational forces on Mars, which will in turn allow them to design a rovercraft that is ideal for the planet’s conditions. This testing serves as an important purpose and is crucial to achieving the goal of Mars colonization as these rovercrafts can serve as delivery systems.

This is a mission that has been in the works for a long time and NASA was planning on completing it within a particular time frame. However, the COVID-19 pandemic was a major setback that pushed deadlines. One significant challenge that NASA faced was assembling integrations during the final phases of the mission’s development, as a large majority of NASA and JPL staff were working from home. Omas Baez, the senior launch director, said “I never would have thought that a launch director would be working from home and I’ve done that for the last five months,” and that “It’s humbling to see how our whole team from the range, to our partners at JPL, to our partners at ULA, to our folks at headquarters – how we all had to adjust to work in this environment, to work electronically.” Despite the setbacks imposed by the pandemic, they were still able to launch the rover by the target date.

The original launch date was July 18, which is at the very start of the interplanetary liftoff window that generally lasts a month. Another challenge, apart from the lockdown resulting from the pandemic, was regarding a crane at the Vertical Integration Facility. The ULA had to spend a few days dealing with this, which pushed the launch date to July 22. This was further delayed to July 30, as explained in a press release from NASA, “due to launch vehicle processing delays in preparation for spacecraft mate operations.”

The Atlas V (541 configuration) consists of a common core booster and four rocket motors that are carrying a payload that is 197 feet tall. The rocket provided a thrust of 2 million pounds, which rocketed the spacecraft away from Florida and towards the Atlantic Ocean. The separation between the two stages of the rocket happened after around 90 seconds of flight, as the rocket motors were exhausted. This coat phase lasted around 30 minutes, after which the Centaur completed another nominal burn lasting around 8 minutes. It delivered the payload to a heliocentric, rather than Earth-bound, orbit.

After the separation, the Perseverance rover was propelled towards Mars and the Centaur (in the upper-stage) performed a maneuver known as the blowdown. This is done to prevent it from entering Mars, providing planetary protection. Approximately 20 minutes after this procedure, Perseverance started sending signals to Earth via its transmitter. These signals were received by the transmitters at NASA’s Deep Space Network, which has arrays of giant antennas.

This interplanetary journey and exploration of the red planet with the Perseverance rover will continue for years to come as NASA is planning on another launch on February 18, 2021.