Tonight this plucky little Rover will land on Mars.

In 2019 I got to go and see it being made.

Here’s the maddest stuff I learned on the trip.

1 of 8 https://twitter.com/nasapersevere/status/1362416769755844615

The rover has to nail a tricky landing to end up in a dried up river bed, where it’ll search for signs of life.

My guess? They chose the site because life is more likely near water.

But no - it’s also because stuff upstream would have washed down and be deposited in the soil.

So the rover effectively gets to look at the micro-biology of a huge area all at once.

Quite clever those rocket scientists aren’t they.

The rover is going to dig for rock samples that can later be analysed for life.

But the mission to collect the samples hasn’t been built yet.

Nor the mission to get them off Mars.

Or the mission to get them back to Earth.

So for now, the rover is just chucking these sample casings on the ground to worry about later.

It means Mars is going to look a lot like Shoreditch gutters the morning after someone’s had a laughing gas party.

Out back, they what is basically an assault course for Rovers, where they deliberately get the mockups stuck on rocks & slopes and work out how to get out of them.

Think Mars Robot Warz and you’re pretty much there.

This “fact” is just a thinly veiled excuse for my selfie tbh

There are strict rules about not graffitiing the rover with your names or messages (it is sent from “Earth” not the engineers who built it).

But I heard a rumour that someone had once been caught spelling out their kid’s name in microscopic lettering on the transistors.

And speaking of which, you need to know that the gift shop at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory sell these extremely brilliant baby suits.

I did not manage to graffiti her name though.

(OR DID I?)