This demonstration helps mission planners test ways of using Mars' natural resources to support human explorers and improve designs for life support, transportation, and other important systems for living and working on Mars. Perseverance tests a technology for extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, which is 96% carbon dioxide. This could potentially pave the way for future missions to retrieve the samples and ferry them to Earth for intensive laboratory analysis. It gathers and stores the cores in tubes on the Martian surface, using ' depot caching.' Caching demonstrates a new rover capability of gathering, storing, and preserving samples.

And for the first time, the rover carries a drill for coring samples from Martian rocks and soil. Improvements on Perseverance include a new, more capable wheel design. The Perseverance long-range mobility system allows it to travel on the surface of Mars over 3 to 12 miles (5 to 20 kilometers).

The Perseverance rover design minimizes costs and risks because it is largely based on the engineering design for the previous Curiosity rover. It might also capture sounds of the rover at work, which would provide engineers with clues about the rover's health and operations, and would be a treat to hear. A microphone allows engineers to analyze entry, descent, and landing. This sophisticated navigation system allows the rover to detect and avoid hazardous terrain by diverting around it during its descent through the Martian atmosphere. It adds new entry, descent, and landing (EDL) technologies, such as Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN). This type of landing system provides the ability to land a very large, heavy rover on the surface of Mars in a more precise landing area than was possible before Curiosity's landing. The landing system on Mars 2020 mission includes a parachute, descent vehicle, and an approach called a 'skycrane maneuver' for lowering the rover on a tether to the surface during the final seconds before landing. Like NASA's Curiosity rover (, the Mars 2020 spacecraft uses a guided entry, descent, and landing system. The mission uses technological innovations already demonstrated successfully, especially for entry, descent, and landing (EDL). Mars 2020 Technology: Heritage and Innovation Technologies for Entry, Descent, and Landing These include testing a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources (such as subsurface water), improving landing techniques, and characterizing weather, dust, and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars. There are several ways that the mission helps pave the way for future human expeditions to Mars and demonstrates technologies that may be used in those endeavors.

Searching for Ancient Life, Gathering Rocks and Soil Strapped to the rover's belly for the journey to Mars is a technology demonstration - the Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, may achieve a 'Wright Brothers moment “ by testing the first powered flight on the Red Planet. Perseverance will also test technologies to help pave the way for future human exploration of Mars. The rover has a drill to collect core samples of Martian rock and soil, then store them in sealed tubes for pickup by a future mission that would ferry them back to Earth for detailed analysis. The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover will search for signs of ancient microbial life, which will advance NASA's quest to explore the past habitability of Mars.

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