The landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars on 18 February 2021 also included a European instrument: the Laser Retroreflector Array (LaRA) on the rover was developed in Italy.

LaRA will play an instrumental part in the future navigation and positioning of different vehicles on and around Mars. Relaying the signal back to Earth through an orbiter even allows scientists to test Einstein's theory of general relativity.

uropean scientist Simone Dell'Agnello has worked on the reflectors at Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics, which built the devices on behalf of the Italian Space Agency. As Executive Technologist at the institute and principal investigator of this project, he reacts to the successful Perseverance landing in this video, and looks ahead to the Exomars 22 and Mars Sample Return missions in the future.