Probe : Nasa's Mars 2020 Rover to seek out life on Mars

NASA

Nasa's Mars 2020 Rover is bristling with sensors

NASA has unveiled its new improved space robot with 23 eyes to hunt for life on Mars.

The Mars 2020 Rover will blast off in a £1.5billion mission.

Its 23 cameras will be able to zoom in on clues the size of a grain of salt.

The US space agency spent at least £100million designing seven new instruments to sniff the atmosphere and analyse samples of rock and dust from above and below the surface.

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The robot is due to be launched in July or August 2020 and will arrive the following year.

It will then spend at least two years roaming the planet seeking out signs of microbial life, although the mission could be extended for years after that.

NASA

The robot will roam the surface of Mars, taking soil and rock 

samples and analysing them for sign of life

NASA

It is equipped with a total of 23 cameras to film every aspect of the mission

Its predecessor the Mars Curiosity Rover landed in 2012 and is still providing scientists with useful data - including the discovery earlier this year of boron, a key ingredient of life.

Ken Farley, a Mars 2020 project scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: "Whether life ever existed beyond Earth is one of the grand questions humans seek to answer.

"What we learn from the samples collected during this mission has the potential to address whether we're alone in the universe."

The 2020 Rover is based on the successful Curosity and Opportunity models but with all-new wheels and a range of new instruments.

NASA

Scientists want the probe to boldly go where no probe has gone before

NASA

It will hunt for aliens in parts of the Red Planet previously deemed too dangerous to land

Seven science cameras will provided detailed high-res images of the samples the robot collects.

Nine engineering cameras facing in all directions will allow mission controllers to steer it safely around the rocky surface.

And seven more cameras will film the craft's precarious descent and landing - the most crucial moment of the mission described as "seven minutes of hell."