JPL Gives Journalists a Look at NASA’s Completed Mars 2020 Rover

Dec. 30, 2019 (EIRNS)—Dressed in anti-contamination suits to protect the next NASA rover to land on Mars, a group of journalists had the opportunity to see the Mars 2020 rover, before it is shipped in February to its Cape Canaveral launch site. The rover will launch this summer, and arrive at Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. Its destination is Jezero crater, believed to have pristine sediments that are as much as 3.5 billion years old, when Mars was similar to Earth.

Although the 2020 rover (which will be named soon) has the basic design of the Mars Curiosity rover, it has more sophisticated scientific instruments than Curiosity, to characterize Mars’s climate, geology, and chemistry, and to search for signs of past microbial life, it has a very specific, new objective.

The rover has robotic arms that will allow it to drill into the soil and crack open rocks in order collect subsurface material. Up to 30 soil samples will be picked up to be placed in sealed containers that will eventually be brought back to Earth. The European Space Agency is considering working with NASA on the mission that will retrieve the samples.