NASA Space Rover makes Successful Landing ‘in Great Shape’

The American space agency has successfully landed its Perseverance rover in a deep crater near the planet’s equator called Jezero.

“The good news is the spacecraft, I think, is in great shape,” said Matt Wallace, the mission’s deputy project manager.

Engineers at Nasa’s mission control in California erupted with joy when the confirmation of touchdown came through.

The six-wheeled vehicle will now spend at least the next two years drilling into the local rocks, looking for evidence of past life.

Jezero is thought to have held a giant lake billions of years ago. And where there’s been water, there’s the possibility there might also have been life.

One tonne of high technology: Seven instruments, multiple cameras, microphones and a big drill

Post-landing analysis indicated the vehicle had come down about 2km to the south east of the delta feature in Jezero that Perseverance plans to investigate.

“We are in a nice flat spot. The vehicle is only tilted by about 1.2 degrees,” said Allen Chen, who led the landing team. “So we did successfully find that parking lot and have a safe rover on the ground. And I couldn’t be more proud of my team for doing that.”

This is the second one-tonne rover put on Mars by the US space agency.