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Per answers to

we can see the relationship between the rovers themselves (who's active work really only begins once they've been set down on the ground and get their software updates) and the whole spacecraft and mission as deployed from Earth at the beginning of its trip to Mars.

Curiosity rover and MSL From this answer (click for larger)

The answer to Did the Mars Science Laboratory do any science that wasn't done by Curiosity proper? explains that the Mars Science Laboratory did minimal science outside of what was done by Curiosity.

But the Mars 2020 mission has had a decade more of development time and learning, and we know it's had some upgrades to the cameras running during atmospheric entry and that active ground recognition system, so I'd like to ask:

Question: Did the Mars 2020 Mission do any science that wasn't done by Perseverance proper? (which at the moment of asking isn't much yet).

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    $\begingroup$ Would you count the EDL footage as Science? $\endgroup$
    – RAD6000
    Mar 12, 2021 at 12:10
  • $\begingroup$ @compi the footage is raw data, if some science has been or is at least planned to be extracted from it, then yes. But if there's no evidence that it will be used for anything more than PR and for engineering investigations of how the spacecraft performed, then I'd say no, that wouldn't be yielding any "science". Maybe if the trajectories of the various components yielded wind information, or there were temperature measurements all the way down just for example... $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Mar 12, 2021 at 12:21

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