Some cool things about the new Mars rover, named Perseverance.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/7/29/21340464/nasa-perseverance-ingenuity-launch-live-stream-how-to-watch-science-life-on-mars

1. It's got a drone helicopter aboard. Will be the first to fly on another planet.

2. It will run an experiment to generate oxygen out of Mars's CO2 atmosphere.

3. It's going to billions year old ancient river delta. You can see what the area looks like from space. It looks like a delta here on Earth (but, like, totally dead)

4. Not only will the rover traverse this rough terrain, it's going to be searching for signs that there was once life in this area, back when Mars was young, and still had water on its surface.

5. It's going to use high-tech gizmos to figure out the chemical composition of rocks, and determine if they're likely to hold evidence of ancient life.

6. Then, then! it's going to drill into that rock, and collect samples TO RETURN TO THE EARTH ONE DAY (date of return mission TBD).

This is the best chance we have yet to see if anything was ever alive on Mars.

If stuff was alive on Mars: whoa.

More questions will have to be asked. Like was it a separate genesis from the Earth? Did life start and evolve there on its own. Or was there a common genesis?

The big question: How rare is life in the universe? The more life we find in our own solar system, the more likely it is to exist in the great way out there.

Personally, I'm excited to have something to look forward to next year.

The rover is supposed to land on Mars in February. That's a date I can put on my calendar, and look forward to. It will be a great accomplishment for humanity, and just damn cool.

Also holy shit @NASA and @NASAJPL are pulling this off where, like the rest of us, many of their staff have been working from home for months. If you thought your remote coordination was hard, just try to send a robot truck to Mars.

This launches tomorrow at 7:50 am Eastern. If not tomorrow, sometime in the next two weeks. There's a link in here for you to watch!

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/7/29/21340464/nasa-perseverance-ingenuity-launch-live-stream-how-to-watch-science-life-on-mars Broadcast starts at 7 am Eastern tomorrow.