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NASA rover lands on Mars - 24th February 2021

NASA's Perseverance rover has reached its destination of Mars after 7 months in space.

Perseverance is now ready to start its mission of searching for evidence of life.

The landing site was a crater in the north of Mars. Scientists are currently examining the rover’s photos of the area. Scientists believe the crater was once home to a river. It's believed that Mars could have supported life because it once held water.

Perseverance is equipped with a variety of scientific tools to assist its exploration of the red planet. It will use the latest technology to collect rocks and scan for organic material. However, it has one device which has never been used before - a helicopter drone.

This remote controlled flying machine could be used in many different ways, as Steve Jurcyzk from NASA explains.

Steve Jurczyk: "This mission also has technology on it. One of the cool things is the Ingenuity helicopter. It's, it’s an experiment on this mission. But if it's successful, we can use it as an observation, science observation platform by putting instruments on it, and also use it as a scout for future rover missions."

MiMi Aung is the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Project Manager.

MiMi Aung: "This is super exciting. Know we have been working on Mars helicopter for over six years, testing and carefully designing it for operation at Mars. So what's going through my mind? Ingenuity Mars helicopter is finally at the destination that it is designed for."

Other experiments will look at turning C02 on the planet into oxygen, which could assist future missions to Mars.

Perseverance won't be on its own for long. China plans to land its own rover Tianwen-1 on Mars in May.