Washington: After a nearly seven month journey through space, Perseverance — the largest and the most advanced rover NASA has ever sent to another world — successfully touched down on the surface of Mars on Friday in a nail-biting landing that marks its first step in the search for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.
Packed with groundbreaking technology, the Mars 2020 mission launched on July 30, last year, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, US.
The rover streaked through the Martian atmosphere and landed safely inside the vast Jezero Crater on Mars, after traversing 472 million kilometres from the Earth, the US space agency said.
The touchdown of the rover marks an ambitious first step in the effort to collect Mars samples and return them to Earth, it said.
“This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the US, and space exploration globally — when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to…