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What is Perseverance looking for?

The western edge of Jezero Crater features a dried-up river delta, as imaged by ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter.
The western edge of Jezero Crater features a dried-up river delta, as imaged by ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter. Image: ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin

Perseverance is going a step beyond Curiosity’s stated mission goals, and with a more modern suite of instrumentation. The newer rover is seeking signs of ancient life on Mars—a mission emboldened by Curiosity’s discovery of ancient environments suitable for life as we know it.

On Earth, the most ancient signs of life are stromatolites, or microbial mats left behind by microorganisms. Earth’s most ancient stromatolites are several billion years old. The prevailing scientific thinking on the matter is that, if life did once exist on Mars, it probably looked like the organisms that produce stromatolites, which inhabit shallow flowing waterways.

Ergo: The impetus to dispatch a rover capable of investigating the river delta that flowed into Jezero Crater.

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