Nasa Mars launch: Why the Perseverance rover will be space agency's smartest and strongest ever visitor to red planet

Nasa is firing a rover towards Mars in a launch that should liftoff this week. The rover, Perseverance, has the job of looking for evidence of ancient life that may have once called the Red Planet home. And it will do so using a suite of technology that makes it the smartest and strongest of the numerous rovers that have been sent by Mars to look across the surface. It also sets a number of other records. The sample return tubes that the space agency hopes will one day be used to bring parts of the Martian surface back to Earth are the cleanest items that have ever gone to space, and it is carrying a helicopter that will make the first ever flight on another world.