LAS VEGAS – In the year 2031, a rocket packed with Martian rocks and soil samples will launch from the surface of the Red Planet.

And Elisabeth “Libby” Hausrath gets to help to choose which of those extraterrestrial bits will be given a 34-million-mile space ride back to the Pale Blue Dot.

A geoscience professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Hausrath is one of the 10 scientists NASA picked to select which samples will return home – all in the name of science.

“It’s so exciting,” Hausrath told the USA TODAY Network from her office in Las Vegas, flashing the kind grin that comes with learning your next job site is in the vast reaches of outer space. “Can you imagine?”

Awaiting launch

Hausrath will not suit up and board a rocket herself. Instead she and the NASA team will prepare for launch of the Mars 2020 robot rover mission.

Set to lift off next summer, the six-wheeled robot is scheduled to land in February 2021 inside the distant planet's 30-mile-wide Jezero Crater.

"The landing site in Jezero Crater offers geologically rich terrain, with landforms reaching as far back as 3.6 billion years old, that could potentially answer important questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology," NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement to USA TODAY.

Though bone-dry now, a lake and river delta once flowed there.

The rover will not only seek signs of ancient life – it will collect rock and soil samples and store them on the planet's surface.

And for the first time, those samples will return to Earth.

Using cameras and measuring instruments, the robot will transmit data the NASA team will use to choose which pieces board the rocket.

The precious cargo could hold clues give lead scientists a better understanding of the mysterious planet – and our own.

Is there life out there?

“We have meteorites, which are really valuable for understanding Mars,” Hausrath said, “but these samples will be the first ones selected by humans to answer specific questions.”

What returns could shed light on the climate and environmental history of Mars – data that could even answer a question that’s fueled science fiction for decades: Is there life out there?

“Assessing any potential evidence for past life,” Hausrath said, “would really be exciting.”

A journey into the unknown

As a little girl in Idaho, Hausrath grew up looking at the stars above Boise, but picking Martian rocks is an opportunity she never expected to find as a working scientist.

In a way, the job found her.

When she was a Ph.D. student at Penn State University – observing how rocks interact with water and how the relationship shapes soil and water – NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover began transmitting back to Earth data similar to the kind that filled her lab.

With the help of her doctoral adviser, Hausrath wrote a proposal asking NASA to fund the rest of her studies – and they agreed.

Hausrath now has a UNLV research program that seeks to understand chemical weathering and soil formation on Earth and Mars – the planet considered most Earthlike.

The Mars mystery

After the moon and Venus, Mars at times glows as the third brightest object in the night sky. It's a sight humans have studied for about 3,000 years, Hausrath said.

But even with orbital data and clues brought when surface meteorites crashed into Earth, the Red Planet remains a question mark in the cosmos.

“Every time we get more data from Mars, it surprises us,” Hausrath said. “We don’t even know the things we don’t know about Mars. It is still a mystery.”

Contributing: USA TODAY.