“NASA's Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, arrives at Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. Its mission: to demonstrate the first powered flight on another planet. Taking to the Martian skies in Spring 2021,” NASA said.

Cheers erupted in mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as controllers confirmed that NASA's Perseverance rover, with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attached to its belly, has touched down safely on Mars.

The rover has sent back its first images from the surface of the Red Planet Engineers are analyzing the data flowing back from the spacecraft.

The Perseverance Mars rover, which was formerly called Mars 2020, has become the first artificial object to land on the red planet since the Insight Mars lander in 2018. It was the first rover to land since Curiosity touched down in 2012. Perseverance set down in the Jezero Crater, just north of Mars’ equator.

Perseverance will investigate an astrobiological relevant ancient environment on Mars and investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. (ILKHA)