This illustration depicts NASA’s Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars. Perseverance is slated to land at the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021 — assuming this summer’s launch goes off without a hitch.

Mars scientists know the importance of perseverance. given the setbacks. That’s especially true of the quest to retrieve samples from the Red Planet.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...