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Mars 2020 Mission Overview

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[Narrator] NASA's next Mars
rover is in development ━

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and has an ambitious mission.

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Decades of Mars research
from previous spacecraft

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have shown the planet not only
had water in the ancient past,

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but had environments that
could have supported life.

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[Thomas Zurbuchen] Mars is
our neighboring planet

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and in many ways the
most similar to us ━

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and certainly in its history.

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And the question whether
ancient life was there

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is still the question that
keeps us up at night.

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[Ken Farley] Mars 2020
has two new objectives:

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to specifically seek
the signs of life,

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and then sample materials
and prepare a cache

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that could be returned to
Earth by a future mission.

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[Thomas Zurbuchen] Mars
2020 is really the essential

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first part of a sample
return mission.

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So it actually looks at the
environment of these samples

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and then collects them
and stores them.

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Afterwards we will of course go
and bring these samples back.

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So Mars 2020 is the first half
of a return trip.

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[Farley] The Mars 2020 mission,
to the maximum extent possible,

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follows the Mars Science
Laboratory (Curiosity) Mission.

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We're gonna use a very
similar rocket;

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a very similar cruise stage;

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a very similar Entry,
Descent and Landing;

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and the rover━when you step
back━will look almost identical.

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[Erisa K Hines Stilley] Not only
were a lot of designs already

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developed for the most part, but
we're also using a lot of spare

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hardware that we had from MSL
(or “Curiosity”) for Mars 2020.

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If you know where to look on
Lab, you can walk around and see

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a lot of the EDL hardware and
the cruise stage hardware

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that's already been built.

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[Farley] And this is really
important for understanding

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why this mission makes sense.

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We have to do relatively little
in the way of new development.

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This saves money; it saves risk;
it saves time ━

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it's the right way to pursue
this kind of mission.

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[Narrator] Mars 2020 also
features new technologies

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for Entry, Descent and Landing━-

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allowing it to target a
smaller landing zone,

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and even divert from
known risks in the area.

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[Hines Stilley] It means that we
can both go to places that are

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maybe more interesting
to the scientists

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because we're able to handle
places with more hazards,

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as well as land closer to the
things they're interested in

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off the bat ━ so we get to
the science they care about,

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and more quickly.

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[Farley] The three key sites
that we are considering

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right now share one thing
in common: they are all

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environments that
might have been habitable

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in the very distant past.

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One of them is the
floor of an ancient lake;

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another is a hot spring;

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and the third one is a site
where hot water interacted

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with rocks in the
shallow subsurface.

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We have instruments on board
which are expressly designed

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to seek evidence of ancient life
━ what we call “biosignatures”

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━ and we have the capability
to prepare samples,

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drill them out of a rock,

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seal them in a tube,

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so that a future mission could
go and bring them up ━

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we call that “caching.”

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[Zurbuchen) So it is a first
of a new type of mission,

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which is to bring samples back
to the best labs we have,

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which are here on Earth.

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Mars 2020 is a pivotal mission
in our search for life

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that could finally answer
the age-old question:

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“Are we alone?”

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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory