The essential energy, water, and nutrient requirements to support and sustain life on Mars are currently present, and the Martian geologic record offers tantalizing clue of many ancient habitable environments.

[7] If life emerged and evolved on early Mars then it is possible, and indeed likely, that physical or chemical biosignatures are preserved in the exposed rock record.

These discoveries and inferences make a compelling case for a rover mission designed to explore for evidence of past Martian life.

While this strategy has been highly successful in the Mars missions of 1996-2007, it is increasingly appreciated that assessing the full astrobiological potential of Martian environments requires going beyond the identification of locations where liquid water was present.

Thus, in order to seek signs of past or present life on Mars, it is necessary to characterize more comprehensively the macroscopic and microscopic fabric of sedimentary materials.

[7] A mid-range rover concept was originally included in the planning work of the Mars Architecture Tiger Team (MATT).

To provide a name that fit the mission concept better, it was changed in August 2009 from the generic Mid-Range Rover (MRR) to Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C).

[7] In April 2011, because of a budgeting crisis, a proposal was announced to fly only one rover in 2018 that would be larger than either of the vehicles in the paired concept, ExoMars (ESA) and MAX-C (NASA).

[12][13] The proposed MAX-C mission would have arrived at Mars in January 2019 in the northern hemisphere during winter, given the favorable atmospheric pressure at this season and performance of the 'sky crane' delivery system.

This tool would be intended to remove small amounts of surface material in order to allow instruments access past any dust and/or weathering layer.

[13] A cost of $70M was estimated to fund the technology development activities;[7] the mission concept would require technology development in four key areas:[3][7] Based on a draft project schedule and a full JPL team experimental study, total project cost in dollars, not including launch vehicle, was estimated to be between $1.5-2.0 Billion.