NASA’s next Martian explorer knows the drill.
LAND
ROVER
BY DANIEL OBERHAUS
If there’s life on the red planet, our best hope of find-
ing it may be this rock-hungry rover, currently in its
final stages of construction (really!) at NASA’s Jet Pro-
pulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Next sum-
mer, the Mars 2020 rover will be deployed to the Jezero
Crater, where it will land in 2021 and spend more than
a year prowling the planet’s surface. The six-wheeled
bot is outfitted with two powerful cameras, sensors
designed to study Martian weather, and radar that can
penetrate more than 30 feet below ground. But its pri-
mary mission will be using its 7-foot-long, turret-tipped
arm (the gray, cylindrical device on the right, pointing
at you) to scour the soil for microbial life. Using ultra-
violet lasers, the appendage scans the terrain to detect
the presence of organic compounds. Then it drills into
rock, extracts core samples, and deposits them into
the rover’s body—all without human intervention. Once
consumed, the samples are hermetically sealed inside
tubes, which the rover will then deposit in one place
to be retrieved by a future mission. Jet Propulsion Lab
technicians evaluating the Mars rover wear white
“bunny suits,” which dissipate static electricity so they
don’t accidentally zap sensitive electronics. The suits
also serve as a barrier between people and the flight
hardware—foreign matter like germs, hair, and dead
skin could taint finely calibrated experiments. “We
don’t want to go to Mars only to discover something
we brought with us,” says NASA deputy chief engineer
Keith Comeaux. The engineers are now testing the rov-
er’s scientific instruments and working to ensure that
the rock samples will remain free of contamination
while awaiting their lift to Earth.
Staff writer DANIEL OBERHAUS (@DMOberhaus)
covers space exploration and the future of energy.