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The rover "Perseverance" has successfully landed on Mars.
This was announced by the US space agency Nasa on Thursday, which followed the signals of the advancing landing spellbound.
Launched in July 2020 from the Cape Canaveral spaceport, the robot touched down with a risky maneuver in a dry lake called "Jezero Crater" that has never been examined on site.
Shortly after landing, the rover was already sending the first images to Earth.
The approximately 2.5 billion dollars (about 2.2 billion euros) expensive NASA rover "Perseverance" (in German: stamina) was designed and built for around eight years and is supposed to search for traces of earlier microbial life on Mars, as well as exploring the planet's climate and geology
On board, the roughly 1000 kilogram robot the size of a small car has among other things 7 scientific instruments, 23 cameras, a laser - and numerous NASA premieres: For the first time, microphones are sent to Mars with “Perseverance”, as well as a small helicopter and for the first time In a mission developed jointly with the European Space Agency Esa, samples are to be brought back to Earth from Mars.
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“Perseverance” is ready for the fifth rover that NASA brings to Mars - most recently in 2012 “Curiosity”.
Overall, however, only less than half of all Mars missions launched worldwide have so far been successful.
In the past week, space probes first from the United Arab Emirates and then from China were successfully swiveled into orbit the planet.
"Al-Amal", the probe of the United Arab Emirates, is not supposed to land, the landing of the Chinese spaceship "Tianwen 1" is planned in two to three months.