Go ahead and pencil in February 18, 2021 on your calendars, because that's when NASA's next Mars rover is due to land on the Martian surface.

The Mars 2020 rover is essentially a souped-up version of the Curiosity rover currently roaming the Red Planet. The 2020 rover is estimated to cost $1.9 billion dollars and will carry a suite of 7 specialized instruments that will science the hell out of Mars. A mission of this magnitude takes years of planning, and in order to ensure its success mission managers are learning from experience.

Based on knowledge about the Martian environment gained from Curiosity, NASA is building the next version to even better fit the environment. Equipped with one-of-a-kind sensors, the 2020 rover will provide new insight in the habitability of Mars.

At this year's meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers' Earth and Space conference, Luther Beegle, principal investigator for the SHERLOC instrument on Mars 2020 and deputy section manager of planetary science at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, spoke about the importance of this mission.

"Our goal is to do great in-situ science," he explained to Motherboard after the meeting. "We need to characterize samples and know exactly where they came from. We have pieces of Mars (meteorites) all over Earth, but the problem with them is they have been altered (via processes like impacts) and we don't know where they came from."

Drill holes from Curiosity's first sample drilling on Mars. Image: NASA

This mission will allow us to study the habitability of Mars and collect samples for later return to Earth. Building on Curiosity's success, the 2020 rover will use a lot of the same hardware on the as Curiosity. Mars 2020 will even have its own seven minutes of terror as it will land on Mars the same way Curiosity did.