© NASA/JPL - CALTECH - Thursday 18 February, the Perseverance rover, carrying a suite of seven instruments including the French SuperCam, a greatly enhanced version of the ChemCam instrument already operating on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover since August 2012, set down in Jezero Crater, an impact basin 45 kilometres across, home to an ancient river delta that flowed 3Âoe billion years ago into a lake. This Mars landing was followed live from the Salle de l'Espace at CNES headquarters in Paris Les Halles, in strict accordance with COVID-19 safety protocols, by President Emmanuel Macron, Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, Finance and the Recovery, Frédérique Vidal, Minister for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall and CNRS Chairman & CEO Antoine Petit. It also offered the opportunity for a video link-up between the French President and Thomas Pesquet, who is currently readying for his second spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS) this spring. Sent aloft on 30 July 2020 atop an Atlas V launcher from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Perseverance, NASA's latest rover, will explore this ancient region of Mars to reveal its geologic history, determine whether it was once habitable and look for signs of life. Besides exploring in situ, the rover is designed to collect and cache samples for later retrieval and return to Earth by two joint U.S'European Mars Sample Return (MSR) missions within the next 10 years. Its mission is also to pave the way for future human exploration of the red planet.
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