Three countries are launching missions to Mars this month
In this illustration, NASA's Mars 2020 rover uses its drill to core a rock sample on Mars. ( NASA/JPL-Caltech/)Over the next month, a flotilla of spacecraft will blast off into space with a one-way ticket to one of the solar system’s most mysterious objects: Mars. They are tasked with helping answer a question that has puzzled scientists for decades—is there, or was there ever, life on the red planet?Mars is a dead, cold desert world with a wispy atmosphere. But that wasn’t always the case: Decades of exploration on our planetary neighbor have made it clear that in its early history, Mars was vastly different. Growing evidence from previous missions to Mars—including NASA rovers Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity—have shown that the planet could once have been lush with liquid water oceans.Still, “we haven’t found the proverbial dinosaur bones sticking out of the Martian surface,” says Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project...