But why is all of the attention on Mars? You may think that it is because it is the closest planet to us. Surprisingly, it is not.

Perseverance is the fifth rover to operate on Mars. China's Tianwen-1, which is currently in orbit around Mars, will be the sixth if it lands successful in May.

Besides rovers, there have been landers, orbiters, and missions to the moons of Mars. In fact, 49 missions in total, with 15 occurring since 2000. NASA has now launched 22 missions to Mars, closely followed by Russia / the former USSR with 19. China has now launched two, and the EU (European Space Agency), UK, Japan, India, and now the UAE have all launched missions to Mars.

Venus on the other hand, has had 40 missions launched to it with only four in the past two decades. There have only been nine to all of the outer Solar System - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and beyond.

So back to the fact that Mars isn't our closest neighbour. We can measure the distance a planet is from Earth in two ways - the closest we can ever be or on average, how close we are. As all the planets go around the Sun, sometimes they are on the exact opposite side of the Sun, and therefore at their furthest point away. At other times, we can be on the same side. In the case of Venus, it can be about 42 million kilometres away from Earth, making it the closest a planet ever gets to Earth at a single point. When we are on opposites sides, it can be over 250 million kilometres to Venus.

However, on average, the planet closest to Earth is not Venus nor Mars. It is actually Mercury.

As Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, it never is that far away from Earth. It can be as close as 90 million kilometres and as far as 210 million kilometres to the Earth. Compare that to Mars which can be between 78 million and over 375 million kilometres away from Earth.

So while Mars is not the closest, it is still relatively close. More so, it is that the more we study Mars, the more we see that Mars was, and potentially still is, able to host some sort of life. When missions went to Venus, the extreme temperatures (it is 462 degrees Celsius every day), the sulfuric acid, and pressure meant it is not the most hospitable.

Over the past decades, those missions to Mars have shown ice caps (like the Arctic and Antarctica), ice underneath the surface, salt water lakes underneath the ground, and even seasonal changes of methane in the atmosphere (think cows). They have also shown clear evidence of lakes, rivers, and a lot of water at some point. It has led scientists to the conclusion that Mars could have been a lot like Earth billions of years ago.

And if it was like Earth, then maybe there was, or still is, life. Mars may be the key to answering the question of whether we are alone in the Universe, and even give us clues to potentially how life came to be on Earth.

And that is exactly what Perseverance is set out to do.