Q&A with Michel Denis, ExoMars flight director

After years of analyses and debate, NASA announced Monday that the agency’s next Mars rover will land on or near an ancient river delta where water once flowed into a 30-mile-wide, 1,600-foot-deep crater to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to continue ongoing studies of the red planet’s history and evolution.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft rolled out to pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Friday. Hydraulics raised the 215-foot-tall rocket vertical on the historic launch pad in preparation for liftoff with four astronauts heading for the International Space Station.

The European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover left its Airbus factory in Britain on Wednesday, heading for a round of testing in France before integration with its carrier and descent modules on pace for launch toward the Red Planet next July.