2025-12-10
16 分钟For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Peer-Lewis in for Rachel Feldman.
In July of 2020, NASA engineers sent a rover named Perseverance, hurdling into space.
And in pictures, it kind of looked like the diminutive robot in the Disney Pixar film Wally,
just much, much larger.
Perseverance, however, has spent its nearly five years on Mars focused on a very different mission.
Instead of collecting trash,
Perseverance has roamed the Red Planet collecting rock samples with the goal,
in part, of finding potential evidence of life on Mars.
The plan is to send the samples back to Earth, where they'd undergo further study.
But that project, known as Mars Sample Return, is hanging on by a thread.
To walk us through what's happening,
we are joined today by Lee Billings, a senior desk editor here at Siam.
Thanks for joining us, Lee.
Kendra, it's great to be here as always.
You know, I think to begin,
can you tell us broadly about the mission that Perseverance was tasked with completing on Mars?
Sure.
Perseverance landed on Mars in early 2021.
It was launched in 2020.
And it was a follow up to Curiosity, another NASA Mars rover.