Work now starts to find life...

THE rover will hunt for ancient signs of life on the Red Planet.

It will collect and store dozens of samples, which a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign will bring back to Earth by 2031.

Scientists will then test the material using far more powerful and precise equipment than a single rover can carry to Mars. It will help determine if life can exist on the planet.

The 2,260lb Perseverance is also carrying an instrument called Moxie (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment).

Oxygen

It is hoped it will help demonstrate how future explorers might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere.

Michael Hecht, NASA’s principal investigator, said: “When we send humans to Mars, we will want them to return safely and to do that they need a rocket to lift off the planet.

“Liquid oxygen propellant is something we could make there and not have to bring with us.”

Other equipment includes cameras capable of taking panoramic images, a ground-penetrating radar that can detect water or ice more than 30ft beneath the surface and a close-range microscopic camera named Sherloc.

RYOU MAY have seen me recently tottering around the shops like a Madame Tussauds waxwork come to life: rigid-backed, straight-limbed, waxy-faced.

Return with me 40-odd years to a cottage in Yorkshire.

I’ve knocked out a fireplace: bricks are piled into a dustbin and I’m dragging it outside.

Oh, if only I could stop myself! But the late Alan Clark MP quoted the iron “two-second rule”: “You can’t turn the clock back, not even by two seconds.” So my disc duly ruptures; decades of intermittent agony ensue.

A locked back for lockdown. Fitting, I s’pose.