Nasa’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover has four main scientific objectives. Looking for habitability, seeking biosignatures, catching samples and preparing for humans. To look for habitability, the rover must “identify past environments capable of supporting microbial life,” Nasa states. As for seeking biosignatures, Perseverance will look for signs of potential microbial life in the past, particularly in certain rocks known to preserve signs of life as time goes on. When caching samples, the rover will collect “core rock and ‘soil’ samples and store them on the Martian surface,” Nasa also states. Another one of the many tasks that Perseverance has had bestowed upon it includes testing the oxygen production in the atmosphere of Mars. 

The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover will look for signs of ancient microbial life that will enhance NASA’s journey to explore past habitability on Mars. The tools it will use to help scientists here on Earth include a drill used to collect core samples of rock and soil on Mars, then proceed to store them in sealed containers that will be retrieved by a future mission, which will bring them back to Earth for a detailed analysis. Lastly, strapped to the belly of the rover is, “The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, technological demonstration,” said Nasa. “This is very analogous to the Wright Brothers moment, but on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, the project manager of the Mars helicopter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.