Latest on Mars

Nasa has nearly finished building a robot that will explore the surface of Mars – and examine the possibility that alien fossils are there waiting to be found. The space agency hopes that the 2020 rover can find evidence of past life on the planet, as well as helping to discover how possible it could be that humans will live there in the future. The Mars 2020 rover will receive its official name next year, but Nasa has shown it off to the world during an event for the media that showed the robot was nearing completion.

Members of the media walked the clean-room floor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on Dec. 27 to glimpse the agency's Mars 2020 rover and speak with experts working on the mission. It was the media's only opportunity to see the rover from inside the clean room prior to its shipment to Cape Canaveral in February. "It was a great opportunity for the media not only to see our work close up, but to meet some of the women and men who have dedicated several years of their careers ensuring this next Mars rover lives up to the legacy of those that were built here before it," said David Gruel, the Mars 2020 assembly, test and launch operations manager at JPL. The clean room, also known as the Spacecraft Assembly Facility's High Bay 1 , is where all four of NASA's Mars rovers were constructed: the microwave-oven-sized Sojourner , which landed in 1997; the golf-cart-sized Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which la