WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WOWO): A Purdue University professor is among those working on the next Mars rover. 

The Mars 2020 rover will have more sophisticated instruments than previous rovers to study the Martian environment, as it attempts to determine the potential habitability of the planet and search for signs of ancient Martian life, according to NASA. “These are things like microbial fossils or organics that might be a direct indication that there was in fact once life on ancient Mars, which is unique because we don't know of anywhere else in the universe where life existed,” said Briony Horgan, assistant professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary science at Purdue. 

Horgan is a member of the Mars 2020 Rover team, and she is specifically helping to design the Mastcam-Z, a mast-mounted camera system that can perform a number of experiments. “What it can also do is use different wavelengths of light to image the surface with different colors, which help us understand what (the Martian) surface is made of, because different minerals and different rocks reflect at different wavelengths differently,” Horgan said. 

The team will use the equipment to gather information about the minerals in Martian rocks and better understand the composition of the planet's surface. The geologic features identified by the Mastcam-Z team of scientists also will help direct the mission's search for signs of life. If the rocks in an area indicate it might once have been the bottom of a lake, then the science team might decide to send the rover over for a closer look and to use other equipment onboard to test for organic compounds and biosignatures, she said. 

Mars 2020 is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2020 and land on Mars in early 2021. It will join the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity that landed in 2012 and has had its mission extended indefinitely.