Mars rover arrives at the Kennedy Space Center

When an enormous box was unloaded from a cargo plane late last week on the Space Coast, NASA had received the next big thing for Mars: A rover with a companion helicopter that will be sent to the Red Planet to do some poking around, looking for signs of water and microorganisms and maybe, just maybe, leftover clues of ancient life.

NASA has the Curiosity rover on Mars right now, but this new rover is more advanced because it can cover more ground and can collect and store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes.

In later missions, those will be collected for analysis.

"The list of unknowns about an extraterrestrial body is long and we’ve only been exploring Mars for about 50 years or so," said Malcolm Boston, vehicle systems engineer.  

This Mars 2020 rover, which will soon be re-named based on fan input, will first be blasted into space on a rocket, then it will have its cruising phase, heading for Mars which will take eight to nine months.

When it is ready to touch down, it will target a massive martian crater. 

NASA says the timetable could change, but as of right now, officials are targeting the summer to launch this mission to Mars.

NASA says the rover is a scout gathering intel for human missions in the years to come.

Boots on the ground on Mars could happen in the 2030s.