3 missions are poised to launch toward Mars this month, including NASA's car-sized Perseverance rover, which will hunt for signs of ancient Mars life and cache samples for future return to Earth.
, known as Tianwen-1, is scheduled to lift off atop a Long March 5 rocket.
The orbiter sports six instruments, including a high-resolution camera, a magnetometer and a mineral spectrometer, which will allow mission team members to determine the composition of surface rocks. The rover also has six instruments, including a weather station, a magnetic field detector and a ground-penetrating radar, which could spot subsurface water ice down to a depth of about 330 feet .
The six-wheeled robot will also collect and cache several dozen samples from particularly promising study sites. This material will be, perhaps as early as 2031, in a campaign conducted by NASA and the European Space Agency. Scientists in labs around the world will then scrutinize the Mars material in great detail, looking for signs of life and clues about the planet's evolutionary history.
If Ingenuity is successful, future Mars missions could commonly incorporate helicopters, NASA officials have said. Such rotorcraft could serve a variety of purposes, from scouting out promising study sites for rovers to exploring hard-to-reach areas such as caves or steep-walled craters.
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