The US space agency on Friday showed off its Mars 2020 rover, whose official name is to be chosen early next year. NASA would in February ship the rover to Florida’s John F. Kennedy Space Center, where its three sections are to be fully assembled. A July launch would send the rover to a dry lake bed on Mars that is bigger than the island of Manhattan. The findings of the rover’s research would be crucial to future human missions to the red planet, including the ability to make oxygen on the surface of Mars, Wallace said. The rover is to carry equipment that can turn carbon dioxide, which is pervasive on Mars, into oxygen for breathing and as a propellant.

Source: Taipei Times December 28, 2019 15:56 UTC