Touchdown: Perseverance ready to search for life on Mars

Washington - Nasa confirmed that the Mars 2020 spacecraft carrying the Perseverance rover had touched down the red planet’s atmosphere.

Nasa announced on Thursday that the Perseverance rover has touched down on the surface of Mars after successfully overcoming a risky landing phase known as the “seven minutes of terror.”

Ground controllers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, cheered and exchanged fist bumps and high-fives in triumph — and relief — on receiving confirmation that the six-wheeled Perseverance had touched down on the red planet, long a deathtrap for incoming spacecraft.

It took a tension-filled 11 1/2 minutes for the signal to reach Earth.

“Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking signs of past life,” flight controller Swati Mohan announced to back-slapping colleagues wearing masks against the coronavirus.

The autonomously-guided procedure was completed more than 11 minutes earlier, which is how long it takes for radio signals to return to Earth.

"Touchdown confirmed. The #CountdownToMars is complete, but the mission is just beginning," Nasa announced in a tweet.

"I’m safe on Mars. Perseverance will get you anywhere," tweet by Nasa's Perseverance Mars Rover said.

“WOW!!” tweeted Nasa Associate Administrator Thomas Zurburchen as he posted the Perseverance’s first black and white image from the Jezero Crater in Mars’ northern hemisphere.

The landing marks the third visit to Mars in just over a week. Two spacecraft from the UAE and China swung into orbit around Mars on successive days last week. All three missions lifted off in July to take advantage of the close alignment of Earth and Mars, journeying some 300 million miles in nearly seven months.

The rover is only the fifth ever to set its wheels down on Mars. The feat was first accomplished in 1997 and all so far have been American.

About the size of an SUV, it weighs a tonne, is equipped with a seven foot (two metre) long robotic arm, has 19 cameras, two microphones, and a suite of cutting-edge instruments to assist in its scientific goals.

Perseverance now embarks on a multi-year mission to search for the biosignatures of microbes that might have existed there billions of years ago, when conditions were warmer and wetter than they are today.

Starting from summer, it will attempt to collect 30 rock and soil samples in sealed tubes, to be eventually sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for lab analysis.

“The question of whether there’s life beyond Earth is one of the most fundamental and essential questions we can ask,” said Nasa geologist Katie Stack Morgan.

“Our ability to ask this question and develop the scientific investigations and technology to answer it is one of the things that make us as a species so unique.”

• Americas