 NASA's next Mars rover Perseverance has an ambitious mission. We know from decades of Mars missions that the Red Planet not only had water in its ancient past, but that water could have supported life. Mars is our neighboring planet and in many ways the most similar to us since certainly in its history. And the question whether ancient life was there is still the question that keeps us up at night. In search of an answer, NASA is sending a rover the size of an SUV to an ancient lakebed on Mars called Jezero Crater. Equipped with durable custom-built wheels, two robotic arms, and a whole suite of science instruments both inside and out, Perseverance will rove across the surface of Mars in search of evidence that ancient life might have existed in the past. So the Mars 2020 rover will be seeking signs of ancient life in the ancient rocks of Mars to look for things that we call biosignatures, which are signs that ancient life might have been there in the past. But that's not all this determined rover will accomplish. Mars 2020 is really the essential first part of a sample return mission, which is to bring samples back to the best labs we have, which are here on Earth. Perseverance will drill into Martian rocks, collect samples, and prepare them for a future mission to pick them up and bring them back to Earth. This is something that's never been done before. So Mars 2020 is the first half of our return trip. To get to the most interesting rocks on Mars, Perseverance has to land safely among crevices, craters, and canyons. NASA engineers designed a new terrain-relative navigation system, allowing the rover to autonomously divert from known risks in the area, while targeting a smaller landing zone than ever before. It means that we can both go to places that are maybe more interesting to the scientists because we're able to handle places with more hazards, as well as land closer to the things that they're interested in off the bat. So we get to the science that they care about, and more quickly. So we can get to the most exciting places, which are often the most challenging. Building on the discoveries of orbiters, landers, and rovers before it, Perseverance is pivotal in our search for life beyond Earth. That could finally answer the age-old question, are we alone?