Perseverance Rover on Mars - stock photo

Artwork of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. The mission consists of a 3-metre-long rover called Perseverance, and a smaller 'rotorcraft' (1.2 metres in diameter) called Ingenuity. The helicopter is expected to fly five missions during the first 30 days of the mission, scouting locations for the rover. It is the first attempt at flight on another planet. The rover, meanwhile, will search for past signs of life in the red Martian soil, limiting its search to the bed of an ancient lake (now a crater called Jezero) and will prepare samples left on the planet's surface for later recovery and analysis on Earth.