A new rover of the US space agency NASA should land in 2021 in an old crater on Mars. The Jezero crater with a diameter of around 45 kilometers emerged after about five years of search as the favorite among about 60 candidates, said the NASA in the night of Tuesday.
The crater is geologically very interesting, reports Thomas Zurbuchen of the space agency. However, a landing at the site because of numerous cliffs and rocks is also a big challenge.
The Jezero Crater is located north of the Mars equator. The region contains some of the oldest Mars structures. Some rock formations in the crater are 3.6 billion years old and could potentially provide important insights into the formation of planets, NASA reports.
DPA
Jezero Crater on Mars
The landing region is also interesting for the researchers, because there was once a river delta there. Therefore, the scientists also hope to find old organic molecules. They may be an indication that microbes used to live in the water.
Revised "Curiosity" version
Among other things, the rover is to collect rock and rock samples on Mars and temporarily store them on the planet. However, Nasa does not yet know how to return the samples to Earth. Concepts are currently being developed.
"Mars 2020" is a kind of revised version of the Rover "Curiosity" landed in 2012. The new Rover is about the size of a car - three meters long, 2.7 meters wide and 2.2 meters high. He weighs about a ton. The Mars vehicle is scheduled to launch in July 2020.
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Before that, another NASA robot will arrive on Mars: Already next Monday, the landing of the measuring station "InSight" is planned. However, unlike "Curiosity" and "Mars 2020" this robot can not roll. Instead, he will drill into the Martian soil. So he should detect earthquakes and measure heat flows. The mission is designed for around two years.