The Mars Perseverance Rover, What Has It Found?

The Mars Perseverance Rover landed on Mars all the way back on February 18th with it’s main objective being to investigate if it was possible that any micro organisms once existed on Mars. But now that more than 8 months have past, what has it found? It’s still exploring Mars as of now, but it has found a few different things.

While it has not found any life, it has collected and stored various rock samples from Mars which will be taken back to Earth and tested. These samples may have some evidence that there was life on Mars. The way they decide to collect these samples is by looking for promising rocks, which are found by looking for rocks that were changed by water, or if they were formed in it. Another factor considered is if it has any chemical evidence of life, also having organic molecules makes it promising to test on. Then they take the core out of the rock and take that as the sample.

The Perseverance Rover is still currently exploring Mars and collecting samples to send back to Earth. While there haven’t been any discoveries of life yet, there still have been these samples that have been collected and there are many great things being tested. The Perseverance Rover’s journey isn’t even halfway done, as they plan to the mission to be at least one Mars year, or about 687 days on Earth, which is almost 2 years! So there’s still plenty of time where more discoveries can be made, and maybe we will be able to find life.

Related story: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/