The Mars Curiosity Rover is one of the most successful planetary missions of all time. Here's how NASA plans to follow that up - the Mars 2020 Rover.
Science Objective A:
Explore once potentially-habitable areas
Science Objective B:
Seek bio signatures
Science Objective C:
Sample Caching
Science Objective D:
Demonstrate in-situ resource utilization.
And here are the instruments that will make that possible.
It contains 2 cameras on the probe’s mast, one called Mastcam-Z, which is the main “eye” for the rover. It can take 360 degree panoramic 3D views with an advanced zoom that can see something the size of a housefly from the distance of a soccer field.
And the second camera is called SuperCam. This can actually do a spectrographic analysis of a rock’s chemical makeup from over 20 feet away by burning a hole in the rock as small as the point of a pencil. This was developed in conjunction with a team from France.
PIXL, or Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry will examine rock and soil samples for signs of ancient microbial life and can take extremely close up images of soil samples down to the size of a grain of salt.
MEDA, the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer is a contribution from a team in Spain, it’s a tiny weather lab that measures wind speed, temperature and humidity and also gathers data about dust particles in the Martian atmosphere.
RIMFAX, the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment from Norway is basically like a sonogram that see tens of meters below the ground and detect elements down to the centimeter. This will help find underground water and ice on Mars.
The aptly named SHERLOC, or Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals is a big sciency way of saying it looks for signs of ancient life with UV light, much like forensic investigators at crime scenes. Hence, Sherlock.
But SHERLOC will carry a couple of interesting things with it, one is a Mars meteorite for calibration purposes.
There’s a handful of meteorites found here on Earth that we know were once a part of Mars that were blasted away in an asteroid impact, then travelled through the solar system and eventually landed on Earth.
SHERLOC is going to carry a piece of one of those meteorites to use to calibrate its laser on the Martian surface, which means this will be the first time a piece of martian rock will be returned to Mars.
The other thing is it will be carrying samples of materials that may be used to make Martian spacesuits, to see how well they fare in the Martian environment.
And last but definitely not least is MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment. This is the module that will be testing in situ resource utilization techniques in the hopes of turning the CO2 in the martian atmosphere into oxygen, just like a tree.
The rover will also contain a special microphone, giving us the first sound recordings from the surface of Mars.