Mars, more solid indications of life and Mars 2020 is ready for launch

Countdown to the launch, scheduled for July 30, of NASA's new mission to the red planet, Mars 2020, which will bring the fifth American rover, Perseverance, and the first drone helicopter, Ingenuity, to Mars while they are traveling to the the probe of the United Arab Emirates and that of China.

All three missions aim to discover the secrets of Mars, including those of the possible presence of traces of past and perhaps even present life, whose clues become more solid thanks to research published in the journal Scientific Reports, from researchers from New York University in Abu Dhabi coordinated by Dimitra Atri.

Research indicates that in the subsoil of the planet, where water is hidden, there may be conditions to support life. By combining simulations, data from past missions that identified water in the Martian subsoil and studies of Earth's underground cave ecosystems, researchers speculate that cosmic radiation, which can penetrate several meters below the surface, could trigger chemical reactions that could provide energy to any life forms.

Confirmation will come from NASA's Perseverance rover. With a sophisticated package of scientific instruments, a robotic arm, the Ingenuity helicopter, which is the first machine that will attempt to fly to Mars, 25 cameras and the first microphones to record sound on the red planet, NASA's Mars 2020 mission is the most advanced ever sent to another planet. The total cost of the mission is 2.7 billion dollars and the launch is expected from the Cape Canaveral, Florida base with an Atlas 5 rocket.

The arrival on Mars is scheduled for February 2021, with the landing in Jezero crater, which in the past hosted the ancient delta of a river and which is one of the Martian places that could have had the conditions to sustain life.

Perseverance will explore the crater for at least one Martian year, which is the equivalent of almost two Earth years, analyzing the soil to look for traces of life or to prove that the ancient river was truly an environment capable of hosting it. It will also collect rock samples that a future mission will have to bring to Earth.