New York | NASA successfully landed its largest and most sophisticated science rover on Mars, as the spacecraft Perseverance touched down in an ancient river delta that may contain signs of whether the planet ever harboured microbial life.

Cheers erupted at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which oversees the agency’s rover fleet, when flight controllers received a signal on Thursday (Friday AEDT) at about 3.55pm eastern US time that the rover had touched down. Perseverance had travelled 470 million kilometres since launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30.

Bloomberg