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Terrain Relative Navigation allowed the 2020 team to select a landing site, Jezero Crater, that was considered too risky for previous missions. This kind of autonomous guidance could prove essential to landing humans safely. It would also be useful for landing equipment in multiple drops ahead of a human crew.
Oxygen
Living on Mars will require a steady supply of oxygen, which would be costly to transport from Earth in the necessary volumes. A cube-shaped device called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is exploring a space-saving alternative that converts carbon dioxide — which constitutes about 96% of the Martian atmosphere — into oxygen. Although MOXIE is a small-scale demonstration, the hope is that its technology could evolve into bigger and more efficient oxygen generators in the future. Those would allow astronauts to create their own breathable air and would provide oxygen to burn rocket fuel needed to return humans to the Earth.
More importantly, MOXIE's descendants would save precious space on the first crewed vehicle to Mars. Not only would that leave more room for supplies, it could also reduce the cost and difficulty of getting from Earth to Mars.
Water
Satellites orbiting the Red Planet regularly peek underground using radar, but Mars 2020 is carrying a ground-penetrating radar called the Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX) that will be the first operated at the Martian surface. Mars 2020 scientists will use its high-resolution images to look at buried geology, like ancient lake beds. But such a radar could one day be used to find stores of underground ice that astronauts could access to provide drinking water. Jezero Crater is unlikely to have any such caches, but many exist elsewhere on Mars.
Spacesuits
Dust and radiation are part of every Martian weather forecast. Dust blows everywhere, sticking to spacecraft and covering solar panels. And because the planet doesn't have a magnetic field, as Earth does, the Sun's radiation bathes the Martian surface. The orbits of Earth and Mars align best for interplanetary travel every two years, meaning the first astronauts on the Red Planet are likely to endure long exposures to radiation.
To help engineers design spacesuits to shield astronauts from the elements, NASA is sending five samples of spacesuit material along with one of Mars 2020's science instruments, called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC). A piece of an astronaut's helmet and four kinds of fabric are mounted on the calibration target for this instrument. Scientists will use SHERLOC, as well as a camera that photographs visible light, to study how the materials degrade in ultraviolet radiation. It will mark the first time spacesuit material has been sent to Mars for testing and will provide a vital comparison for ongoing testing at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Shelter
Humans exploring the Red Planet will need more than good spacesuits; they'll need a place to live. Mars 2020 will collect science that may help engineers design better shelters for future astronauts. Like NASA's Curiosity rover and InSight lander, 2020 has weather instruments to study how dust and radiation behave in all seasons. This suite of sensors, called the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA), is the next step in the kind of weather science Curiosity collects.