Christian Elliott

Hey, Jacob.

Well, let's start with Katie.

She's our guide today for all things Mars.

She first got interested in the red planet back in grad school.

Before that, she studied Earth.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And Perseverance is part of a long lineage of rovers.

Remember, the dream is human explorers on Mars.

Artemis II just demonstrated why it's so crucial to have humans out in space making observations with their own eyes.

But the next best thing is robotic exploration.

The first phase of NASA's Mars strategy was looking for signs of ancient water.

That started back in 1997 with a series of landings.

They found signs that water flowed on Mars up to about 2 billion years ago.

Then there was Curiosity, the rover that Katie worked on as a grad student.

That rover landed in 2012.

It was Curiosity's job to look for evidence that Mars was once habitable.

Exactly.

So then NASA was like, can we ratchet things up a notch and answer the big questions?

And I'm going to keep you waiting on what exactly Perseverance has found so far in that rock record for a little bit.

Because before we get there, I think we need to cover what makes Perseverance unique.