https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7awd3/nasas-perseverance-is-the-first-step-to-answering-if-theres-life-on-mars > On Thursday, NASA will attempt to land its latest rover, Perseverance, in an ancient lakebed on the surface of Mars. Perseverance, the biggest and fastest rover that has ever been sent to the red planet, is tasked with searching for signs of life at its landing site, Jezero Crater, which scientists think was filled with water more than three billion years ago. > Equipped with a small helicopter and a suite of powerful instruments, Perseverance is incredibly ambitious as a standalone mission. But the rover is just the first step of a broader endeavor that scientists have been working toward for decades: returning samples from Mars back to Earth.