A few months ago a new Mars rover from NASA was launched successfully. It was preceded by satellites Spirit and Opportunity who have already gone to Mars and were supposed to keep going for 3 months but lived for about 7 years! One of them is still functional. Anyway, the newer version is supposed to live about 8 months, it will arrive in August 2012 and will look for signs of life past or present and habitability, it will also drill into rocks to examine the red planet's composition.