THE MARS 2020 PERSEVERANCE ROVER MISSION

On 30 July 2020, the Perseverance rover was successfully launched, joining the United Arab Emirates Hope Orbiter and the Chinese Space Agency Tianwen-1 orbiter/lander/rover on their respective journeys to Mars, all of which have now safely arrived at Mars; the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch its Rosalind Franklin rover, along with the Russian Kazachok lander, to Mars in September 2022. The goals of Perseverance rover, having arrived on 18 February 2021, are to explore the geological environment of the Jezero crater landing site; to search for ancient signs of life in the martian rock record; to collect and cache carefully selected and documented rock and regolith samples for eventual return to Earth for study in terrestrial laboratories; and to help prepare for future robotic and human exploration of Mars. The scientific instrument suite on board the Perseverance rover was chosen to investigate the surface materials on Mars at a variety of scales, culminating in submillimeter measurements of chemical composition, mineralogy and possible presence of organic material. The instruments will help the Mars 2020 science team determine whether there is evidence in the rock record of Mars for signs of ancient microbial life (potential biosignatures) that may have been present at or near the surface. The Perseverance rover is also equipped with a one of a kind sampling system that will be capable of collecting up to 43 samples of rock and regolith in hermetically sealed sample tubes (with several tubes designated as witness blanks). NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are currently formulating plans to return the samples collected during the Mars 2020 mission with a set of missions that would launch no earlier than 2026, with the return of the samples to Earth in ~2030.