The next robotic rover to explore Mars in 2020 should scour the surface of the Red Planet more closely than ever for signs of past life, a Nasa science team said on Tuesday.
The US space agency’s science definition team (SDT) released a 154-page document containing its proposals for the next Mars rover, after five months of work. The mission would use microscopic analysis for the first time, collect the first rock samples for possible return to Earth and test ways to use natural resources on site for a future human trip, it said.
The Mars 2020 mission would build on the work being done by Nasa’s Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the red planet since August 2012 and has already found evidence of potentially habitable environments.