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Because space is vast, infinite, mysterious, and really fucking cool, NASA today announced its next major space exploration mission, in which it’ll send a rover to Mars equipped with instruments to explore conditions for an eventual human trip.
Though that rover won’t be launched to the red planet until 2020, NASA announced today at its D.C. headquarters that it “will carry seven carefully-selected instruments to conduct unprecedented science and exploration technology investigations.”
Among those instruments are ones that will evaluate Martian-quality weather, the organic materials and minerals on the alien planet, and even “an exploration technology investigation that will produce oxygen from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
“The Mars 2020 rover, with these new advanced scientific instruments, including those from our international partners, holds the promise to unlock more mysteries of Mars’ past as revealed in the geological record,” John Grunsfeld, an astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a release. “This mission will further our search for life in the universe and also offer opportunities to advance new capabilities in exploration technology.”
The goal of the Mars 2020 rover is to help “advance our knowledge of how future human explorers could use natural resources available on the surface of the Red Planet.” Yes, you read that correctly: NASA scientists are working to find ways to send humans to Mars and the “ability to live off the Martian land.” Yeah, maybe so it can look a little like this: