NASA’s Perseverance rover prepares for Mars landing

In a crater left by an ancient lake, the Perseverance rover will hunt for traces of microbial life, launch Mars’s first helicopter and gather rock samples to send back home.

If NASA successfully lands its fifth rover on Mars on Thursday, it will have delivered the Red Planet’s first microphones, its first aircraft, more cameras than ever before and a life-detecting duo known as SHERLOC and WATSON. The Perseverance rover will also hopefully complete the initial step in an estimated 10-year effort to return samples of Martian rock back to Earth-bound researchers. The rover carries a drill that can collect around 40 core samples, some 30 of which will be returned to Earth in the 2031 timeframe — though that plan could change.