The first images from the Curiosity rover revealed an intriguing, if preliminary, picture of a more sheltered and Mars-like world. With Perseverance arriving much later in the exploration timeline, and by strategy rather than luck, this has led to many suggesting that the end of the first era has come about with Perseverance's arrival.
What will happen is that on February 18, 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover will enter a Martian orbit around the planet and then begin its surface mission. This rover is designed for several ambitious objectives including performing crater analysis to understand how much water was once present on the Red Planet and studying sediments to assess whether or not they may have hosted microbial life.