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The scientific team
While the rover has significant autonomous capabilities, such as driving through the Martian landscape, hundreds of terrestrial scientists are still involved in analyzing the results and planning further investigations.
“The science team is almost 500 people,” Beegle said. “The number of participants in an action given by the rover is in the order of 100. It’s great to see these scientists agree to analyze the clues, prioritize each step and put the pieces of the Jezero scientific puzzle together. “
This will be essential when the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover collects its first samples for a possible return to Earth. They will be sealed in super clean metal tubes on the Martian surface so that a future mission can retrieve them and send them back to the home planet for further analysis.
Despite decades of investigation into the question of potential life, the Red Planet has stubbornly kept its secrets.
“March 2020, in my opinion, is the best opportunity we will have in our lifetime to answer this question,” said Kenneth Williford, project associate scientist for Perseverance.
Geological details are essential, Allwood said, to put any indication of possible life into context and to verify scientists’ ideas on how a second example of the origin of life might come to be.
Combined with the rover’s other instruments, the detectors on the arm, including SHERLOC and WATSON, could make humanity the first discovery of life beyond Earth.
Learn more about the mission
A key focus of Perseverance’s mission to Mars is astrobiology, including looking for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the past geology and climate of the planet, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (shattered rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples on the surface and return them to Earth for further analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s approach to exploring the Moon to Mars, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., Built and manages the operations of the Perseverance rover.
To find out more about Perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
and
nasa.gov/perseverance
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