"We're still pretty early on in the development but we are working to get those samples back here as soon as we can," says Glaze.
But other pieces of the mission's architecture are still in the works. The agency awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to develop the Mars ascent vehicle, which will be the first rocket to launch a payload off of another planet. "It is an incredibly complex mission," says Lori Glaze, NASA's planetary science division director, of the technical and funding challenges ahead. NASA and the European Space Agency are working together to develop a mission to collect those samples, launch them off the surface of Mars and safely return them to Earth. In its first year, it has collected and stashed 6 samples, with the opportunity to collect up to 40. The rover is equipped with drills and sample tubes and has already begun collecting bits of Martian rock.
"Having samples returned is the only way that I, and I'm sure many other astrobiologists, would be truly convinced that we had found evidence for life on Mars," says Williams. Much like river deltas here on Earth, scientists expect to find layers and layers of rich, geological history trapped in the sediment - a prime spot for drilling samples which might have trapped evidence of past Martian life.Ĭonfirming ancient life on another planet would be an extraordinary finding, experts say one that will require extraordinary evidence. "Finding environments where we know water flowed is one of the big boxes we can check off to say this is a really great location for us to perform this investigation." The assumption is that life on Mars would need water as a universal solvent, much like life here on Earth. "Life as we know it requires habitable environments," says Amy Williams, an astrobiologist at the University of Florida and scientist on the mission. "The results from the Viking Landers were ambiguous and taught us that we needed to better understand the surface of Mars and potential habitats on Mars," says Mary Voytek, NASA's senior scientist for astrobiology. The Viking mission, launched in 1975, aimed to look for current life on Mars – and came up empty. mission to successfully touch down on the planet. Nearly a half-century ago, NASA sent a pair of landers to Mars, marking the first U.S. Perseverance is the first NASA rover sent to search for signs of ancient life. "We could really understand Mars much better by getting those samples here on Earth." A history of searching for life on Mars "That's really the major reason for wanting to collect and return samples," says Welch. Scientists really hope to get pieces of the planet back to their labs. The $2.7-billion rover is equipped with a suite of scientific instruments including a rock-blasting laser, cameras and spectrometers.īut a robot geologist – even one as advanced as Perseverance – can only do so much. One of the mission's main objectives is to collect samples of rocks and dirt and stash them on the surface of Mars so that a future mission could pick them up and bring them back to Earth to study. Space After A Successful Landing On Mars, NASA Rover Undergoes A Systems Checkout