NASA begins mission to search for alien life on Mars

The great milestone of the mission will be the collection of samples that will return to Earth in 2026 to be studied in depth. The rover will land on the red planet on February 18. The NASA launched the Mars 2020 mission with the new spacecraft rover , known as "Perseverance", from Cape Canaveral, Florida (EE. UU.) To Mars, for traces of extraterrestrial life as " one of the greatest agency challenges ". "This is the first time in history that we will go to Mars with the explicit mission of finding life on another world," said Jim Bridenstine , administrator of the space agency. "Are we going to be able to find it? We do not know if life existed there , but we do know that Mars at some point in its history was habitable," he added. The launch was carried out successfully at 07:50 local time (13:50 in the Basque Country). The rover has taken off coupled to the Atlas V rocket from launch pad 41 of the Kennedy Space Center, and must travel more than 500 million kilometers to land on the red planet on February 18 . It is the same rocket with which other space vehicles, such as the " Curiosity " rover or " InSight ", have reached Mars. Bringing Martian samples to Earth would be a milestone The mission will last at least one year on Mars, or what is the same 687 Earth days , during which the vehicle will travel the surface of the planet after landing on the Jezero crater. There it will search for remains of microbial life and will try to produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. The Basque company AVS has built two of the seven parts of the vehicle, which maintains the quadrangular shape of the previous rovers, measures 3 meters (10 feet) long and 2.7 meters (9 feet) wide. It weighs 1043 kilos. tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech