NASA's Mars 2020 rover will build on the goals of previous robotic explorers by collecting the first samples of Mars, which would be returned to Earth at a later date. But it will also be on a mission to lay the groundwork for future human exploration.
When NASA's Mars 2020 rover lands on the Red Planet in February 2021, it will touch down in Jezero Crater, the site of a lake that existed 3.5 billion years ago. The next generation rover will build on the goals of previous robotic explorers by collecting the first samples of Mars, which would be returned to Earth at a later date.
"On the science side, we're really thinking about new discoveries we can make on the surface and how [that] will inform what we learn when we get the samples back," said Katie Morgan Stack, deputy project scientist for the rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California."Our job is to find the best samples, collect and store them, and place them on the surface.
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