Q&A with Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator on NASA’s Dawn mission

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.

The build-up of Orbital ATK’s next air-launched Pegasus XL rocket will start in the coming weeks at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and while its flight in mid-2017 is the last Pegasus launcher on the manifest with a confirmed payload, company officials are confident the unique vehicle has a future beyond next year.

United Launch Alliance has completed stacking of the major elements of the Atlas 5 rocket assigned to power NASA’s Perseverance rover toward Mars, but the mission’s launch date has been pushed back three days to July 20 after teams repaired an issue with a crane in the Atlas 5’s assembly building.