Main image via NASA

NASA successfully landed its fifth robotic rover, Perseverance, on the surface of Mars on Thursday after its six-month voyage from Earth. Perseverance was launched  July 30, 2020 during the window when Mars and Earth were the closest to each other.



NASA’s Perseverance rover landed at the Jezero Crater on the Red Planet, where it will begin work to look for signs of past life. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, USA where the mission is managed, have confirmed that the spacecraft is healthy and on target in Jezero Crater at around 4:55am Malysian time on Feb. 19, 2021.



The rover is the most technologically advanced robot NASA has ever sent to Mars. The agency aims to spend nearly two years using it to explore the surface. NASA spent about $2.4 billion to build and launch the Perseverance mission, with another $300 million in costs expected for landing and operating the rover on the Mars surface.

Perseverance is also carrying a small helicopter named Ingenuity, which NASA plans to use to attempt the first flight on another planet.



Perseverance landed in the Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide basin in the northern hemisphere of Mars. It’s a place where NASA believes a body of water about the size of Lake Tahoe used to flow. NASA’s science team hopes the ancient river delta may have preserved organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life, which Perseverance will attempt to detect with its instruments.



What do you think about the amazing achievement, do you think we’d find alien life on Mars? Tell us in the comments! 

Info via NASA

By Thineshkan