The U.S. space agency on Friday showed off its Mars 2020 rover, whose official name will be chosen early next year. A July launch will send the rover to a dry lake bed on Mars that is bigger than the island of Manhattan. “The trick, though, is that we’re looking for trace levels of chemicals from billions of years ago on Mars,” Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace told Reuters. The findings of the Mars 2020 research will be crucial to future human missions to the red planet, including the ability to make oxygen on the surface of Mars, Wallace said. The Mars 2020 Rover is carrying equipment that can turn carbon dioxide, which is pervasive on Mars, into oxygen for breathing and as a propellant.

Source: National Post December 28, 2019 02:37 UTC