After a 300-million-mile ride and a nerve-racking fall to the Martian surface, the multibillion-dollar NASA rover Perseverance arrived safely on the Red Planet shortly before 4 p.m. ET. Here, it would explore and make the Red Planet its new home.
Nuclear-powered Perseverance successfully made a fast, acrobatic plunge through the thin Martian atmosphere which was caught on camera. The rover independently timed its movements to alight inside a nearly four-mile-wide landing ellipse in Mars's Jezero Crater.
NBC News wrote that Perseverance transported a tiny aircraft called Ingenuity. This would be used to undertake the first powered trip on another world.
NASA Rejoices For Percy's Arrival on Mars
Perseverance then announced its safe arrival via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter with a signal sent to Earth and sent the first images from its perch on the surface. Such landing triggered socially distant celebrations at California's NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Complementing face masks muffled cries of joy in JPL's mission control, but the squad's relief and jubilation were still quite clear.
When the touchdown confirmation came in, workers at NASA's mission control in California filled with happiness.
The six-wheeled vehicle will now be digging through the nearby rocks for at least the next two years, searching for signs of past existence.
It is believed that Jezero had massive lake billions of years ago. And where there was warmth, there was the hope that there could be life, too.
Multi-Trillion Blueprint
NASA and European Space Agency built a multi-billion-dollar program to pick up certain samples by the end of the decade. The rational - and required - next phase in Mars exploration is re-tuning samples.
And suppose Perseverance finds anything that appears like a bio-signature, the evidence is most likely to be questioned. These are parts of the arguments in discussing signs of prehistoric existence here on Earth.
Therefore, it is possible that getting rocks back for more, more advanced research is the best way to resolve all arguments regarding past biology on the Red Planet.
"We expect the best places to look for biosignatures would be in Jezero's lakebed or in shoreline sediments that could be encrusted with carbonate minerals, which are especially good at preserving certain kinds of fossilized life on Earth," Ken Williford, deputy project scientist for the Perseverance mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "But as we search for evidence of ancient microbes on an ancient alien world, it's important to keep an open mind."
What's Up with Crater Jerezo?
Jezero, which is 45 km wide, is named after a town in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The term 'jezero,' also means' lake' in some Slavic languages - which may clarify the fascination.
Jezero reveals different forms of rock, including clays and carbonates, which can retain organic molecules that may suggest the past presence of life.
The "bathtub ring" of sediments laid down on the ancient lake's shoreline is especially tempting. It is here that Perseverance was able to discover what are considered stromatolites on Earth.
Dr Briony Horgan, a research team member from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, explained that you could have microbial mats and carbonates combined to create these broad layered mounds in certain lakes.
"If we see anything like that kind of structure in Jezero, we'll be making a beeline straight for it because that could be the holy grail of Mars astrobiology," she told BBC News.
To be left on the floor, the most valuable discoveries would be packed in little tubes.
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