NASA has launched its Perseverance Mars rover and Ingenuity helicopter

An artist’s impression of the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars

NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA has sent a life-hunter to Mars. The Perseverance rover, which will hunt for signs of life past or present on the Red Planet, blasted off on 30 July.

If all goes well, the rover will land on Mars in February 2021, where it will use a sophisticated suite of science instruments including 23 cameras to examine the planet’s climate and geology.

“Perseverance will bring all human senses to Mars,” said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen during a press conference on 20 July. “It will sense the air around it, see and scan the horizon, hear the planet with microphones on the surface for the first time, feel it as it picks up samples to cache, perhaps even taste, it in a sense,” as it performs chemical analyses of the dust, he said.