nasa has just successfully landed its
most ambitious ever mission to mars
after a seven-month journey through
space the rover called perseverance
survived a perilous
high-speed plunge through the martian
atmosphere and made it safely onto the
surface of the red planet
confirming its arrival an hour ago with
a tweet
these images the first sent back within
moments
it's the most advanced rover ever sent
to another world
one that hopes to eventually return
samples to earth
and its mission is to search for ancient
life that may have existed billions of
years ago
tonight's landing is all the more
impressive given how much could have
gone wrong
here's our science correspondent rebecca
morell and a warning her report contains
some flashing images
perseverance is going about one
kilometer per second
a nerve-wracking weight at mission
control
[Applause]
then celebrations as a signal is
received from mars
its touchdown for nasa's perseverance
rover
and these are its first images a view of
its landing site before it starts to
explore
the rovers even started tweeting too i'm
safe on mars
perseverance will get you anywhere what
an amazing team
to work through all the adversity
that goes and all the challenges that go
with landing a rover on mars
plus the challenges of covid and
um and just an amazing accomplishment
it survived a fiendishly difficult
landing burning through the atmosphere
at 12 000 miles an hour
before a complex landing system brought
it down in an area with some of the
oldest rocks on mars
it's amongst the most ancient uh crust
on the surface of mars
capturing that period of time between
three and a half and four billion years
old
which isn't a period of time that's
particularly well preserved in rocks
here on earth
so we have a chance to find out about a
period of the solar system that we've
never
studied before this mission is all about
finding
signs of life and the best place to do
that is here
the jezero crater today it's dry and
dusty but billions of years ago it was a
huge lake
and you can clearly see a river running
into it this gives you an idea of what
it would have looked like
if we zoom in a bit more these green
areas on the edge of the crater
were once beaches on the lake shore and
the hope is
any microscopic creatures that once
lived there are still preserved
perseverance is the most advanced rover
that nasa's ever built and it's
jam-packed with instruments its robotic
arm is equipped with a drill to collect
rock samples
so what forms of life could they contain
i am not talking about martian little
green men probably not even fish
we're looking for microbial life or
maybe microbes that have made a little
mat
or a slime of sorts that you that you
might find on the bottom of a pond
those are the types of things that are
likely to well they did exist on earth
three and a half billion years ago
the question is did they exist on mars
at the bottom of lakes
for the first time nasa will also be
testing a mini mars helicopter
to provide a new bird's eye view of the
planet
and back on the ground the rover will
store some of the rocks
a future mission will bring them back to
earth and some will be heading
to the uk these will be the most
precious samples that we have
on earth the most exciting and
scientists around the world will be
absolutely fighting and clamoring to
study them
getting to the red planet is just the
start now the hard work begins
this is nasa's most ambitious mission
and our best ever chance to know whether
life
ever existed on mars rebecca morrell bbc
news