NASA launches a mission to search for extraterrestrial life on Mars

NASA launched the Mars 2020 mission with the new "Perseverance" rover spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA), which is heading to Mars in search of extraterrestrial life remnants and as "one of the greatest" challenges of agency ".

"This is the first time in history that we are going to Mars on an explicit mission to find life on another world," said Jim Bridenstine, administrator of the space agency. "Can we find it? We don't know if there was life there, but we do know that Mars was habitable at some point in its history."

The launch was completed successfully at 7:50 a.m. local time (1:50 p.m. in the Basque Country). The rover is docked with the Atlas V rocket on launch pad 41 at Kennedy Space Center and has to travel more than 500 million kilometers on February 18 to land on the red planet.

NASA launched the Mars 2020 mission with the new "Perseverance" rover spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA), which is heading to Mars in search of extraterrestrial life remnants and as "one of the greatest" challenges of agency ".

"This is the first time in history that we are going to Mars on an explicit mission to find life on another world," said Jim Bridenstine, administrator of the space agency. "Can we find it? We don't know if there was life there, but we do know that Mars was habitable at some point in its history."

The launch was completed successfully at 7:50 a.m. local time (1:50 p.m. in the Basque Country). The rover is docked with the Atlas V rocket on launch pad 41 at Kennedy Space Center and has to travel more than 500 million kilometers on February 18 to land on the red planet.

It is the same rocket with which other spacecraft such as the "Curiosity" or "InSight" rover arrived at Mars.

Bringing samples from Mars to Earth would be a milestone

The mission will last at least one year on Mars, or the same 687 Earth days that the rover will traverse the planet's surface after landing in Jezero crater. There it will search for remains of microbial life and try to generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

The Basque company AVS built two of the seven parts of the vehicle, which retain the square shape of the previous rovers, are 3 meters long and 2.7 meters wide. It weighs 1,043 kilos.

For the first time, a plane flies over the Martian air thanks to the "Ingenuity" helicopter, which together with the rover flies towards the planet and performs various flight tests with a gravity two-thirds lower than that of the earth.

However, the main milestone of the mission will be the collection of the samples, which will return to Earth in 2026 for an in-depth study. This will be "one of the most complicated and exciting processes of the mission", as they will have to deal with "the harsh conditions on Mars", such as dry terrain or dust storms.

"It is not easy and there is a great risk of success. However, we do know how to land on Mars. This is the eighth time we have done it in our experience," added the NASA administrator.

For the recovery of these samples, NASA has the involvement of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the work of hundreds of scientists of more than a dozen nationalities who will make the return thanks to various transport vehicles.