Mars 2020 Mission: NASA's Life-Hunting Rover Passes 'Major Development Milestone,' Design And Construction To Begin Soon

NASA plans to send its next rover to Mars in the summer of 2020, so that it arrives on the red planet in February 2021, the space agency said Friday. The "Mars 2020" rover, which borrows a lot of its design features from its wildly successful predecessor Curiosity, has cleared an extensive review process and is now ready to enter the final design and construction phase. "The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth," Geoffrey Yoder, acting associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement. "This mission marks a significant milestone in NASA's Journey to Mars -- to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our goal of sending humans to the red planet." Mars, despite its inhospitable climate and heavily irradiated surface that would kill humans in a matter of minutes, has been a source of unending fascination for scientists and science fiction writers alike.