“Touchdown confirmed!”
The two words at mission control in California that signalled to the world that the six-wheeled probe Perseverance had successfully landed on Mars.
The NASA rover is there as part of a mission to uncover signs of life and collect samples of rock.
You can watch the landing in the video player, below.
The landing of the six-wheeled vehicle marks the third visit to Mars in just over a week. Two spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates and China swung into orbit around the planet on successive days last week.
The 2,300-pound Perseverance is NASA’s most advanced rover to date. It is equipped with 19 cameras, an instrument that can provide imaging, chemical composition analysis and mineralogy at a distance, and five samples of spacesuit materials to test whether they can withstand the planet’s radiation. This will help space agencies prepare for a possible future human mission to Mars.
A 1.8-kg helicopter named Ingenuity has also hitched a ride on Perseverance. It is the first aircraft to fly in a controlled way on another planet and its key objective is to demonstrate powered flight in the atmosphere of Mars which is only 1 per cent as thick as that of Earth and where gravity is lower. – Source
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