From the Bits of Universe archive — 30/07/2020

NASA’s Mars 2020 mission launched, the third direct to Mars that started in the last ten days after those of the United Arab Emirates and China. The launch took place from the US Air Force base in Cape Canaveral with an Atlas 5 rocket and leads to Mars Perseverance, the fifth NASA rover to land on the red planet, this time to lead the way for future missions with astronauts and to search for traces of past life or perhaps present.
The most sophisticated robot ever sent to another planet will touch the ground of Mars on February 18, 2021 in the Jezero crater, the ancient river bed in which sediments, where there was water billions of years ago, will look for fossil traces of life past and ice beneath the surface, starting to test the technologies that will one day allow, even human crews, this new, great leap.