Hot Wheels Mars Rover Touching Down

NASA is about to make space exploration history with its latest Mars Rover, the Perseverance. The Mars Perserverance is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on February 18th. It will search for signs of ancient Martian life, utilizing a UV spectrometer, X-ray spectrometer, and onboard drill to take samples.

That's one impressive piece of tech, and Hot Wheels is helping celebrate this momentous undertaking with its Hot Wheels Mars Perseverance Rover 1:64 die-cast. Estimates put the Perseverance mission at north of $2.7 billion. I'm planning on going big and dropping $1-2 at Ralph's to pick up this little piece of NASA and Hot Wheels history.

NASA and Hot Wheels have collaborated for over 30 years. Here's a quick history of this epic collaboration:

- NASA and Hot Wheels relationship started in the mid-80s.
- The first JPL project was in 1996 for the Sojourner Mars Rover in Action Packs.
- There were 5 Action Packs from 1997-1999 with JPL or NASA theme.
--- JPL Sojourner Mars Rover (1997)
--- Apollo Mission (1998)
--- Galileo Mission (1999)
--- John Glenn (1999)
--- JLP Returns to Mars (1999)
- Over the year, JPL has welcomed the design team for tours to get an in-person look at the vehicles.
- The Space mini-collection was brought back in 2021 due to the increased interest from kids and the general public regarding Space Exploration. The Rover was an obvious fit, and we also knew that it would be touching down on Mars around February of 2021.

See here for high-res images and below for information on the new die-cast, along with more background on NASA and Hot Wheels 30+ years of interstellar collaborations.