“Mars today is a desolate, barren place,” says Katie Stack Morgan, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on the mission. But billions of years ago, it looked different. The remains of dried-up rivers and deltas are signs that Mars could have once had flowing water and a thicker atmosphere. Both are conditions for life as we know it.
Perseverance is carrying some cutting-edge technology to help identify possible signs of life. It has 23 cameras—the most ever on a rover! There’s also a mini helicopter, called Ingenuity, which will hopefully be the first aircraft to fly on another planet. The rover’s heavy-duty wheels and specialized navigation system will let it go where no rover has gone before: into the Jezero Crater, which scientists believe to be a dried-up river delta that might hold traces of alien life.