A local professor has been chosen to join a mission to Mars. UNLV Geoscientist Arya Udry was selected out of 119 applicants by NASA.

A UNLV scientist will help NASA with its Mars mission by studying rocks collected from the red planet. The mars rover will recover the rocks from the planets surface.

A second UNLV geoscientist has been tapped to join the research team for NASA's Mars 2020 Mission.

As a researcher studying magmatic rocks, UNLV geoscience professor Arya Udry has had to rely on meteorites catapulting through the solar system and surviving their descent through Earth’s atmosphere to make her work possible.

A UNLV scientist will help NASA with its Mars mission by studying rocks collected from the red planet.

NASA’s next Mars rover, which is scheduled to begin its journey to the red planet tomorrow, will be about the size of a sport utility vehicle, an analog that’s fitting because NASA wants it to do even more than the current rover, Curiosity.

If the Mars Perseverance Rover was lifting off from Cape Canaveral at almost any other time, UNLV Professor Elisabeth “Libby” Hausrath would have had a front-row seat.

Despite the pandemic, NASA is on track to launch its Mars rover, Perseverance, this July from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its central mission will be to search for evidence of previous life on Mars.