Nasa’s Mars rover Perseverance will begin its arduous climb up an ancient delta in search of signs of extraterrestrial life and evidence of the planet’s changing climate.
The six-wheeled rover will collect rocks from sites potentially containing ancient microbes and organic material, and place them at sites at the base of the delta where they can be retrieved by future missions and brought back to earth in the 2030s for study.
“The delta in Jezero crater is the main astrobiology target of Perseverance,” Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist, told BBC News.
“These are the rocks that we think likely to have the highest potential for containing signs of ancient life and can also tell us about the climate of Mars and how this has
