NASA sent a rover on a journey to Mars today in a bold bid to hunt down signs of alien life on the planet’s surface.
It is hoped that Perseverance, which is part of a Nasa mission dubbed Mars 2020, will touch down on the Red Planet next year. It launched at 7.50pm ET (12.50pm) BST on Thursday from the Cape Canaveral Air Force base in Florida.
Once it arrived at the Red Planet, Perseverance will search for signs of alien life at Mars’s Jezero crater.
A textbook launch from the Nasa team, who will now remotely shepherd the Mars 2020 spacecraft on its seven-month journey to the Red Planet.
Blasting into space atop an Atlas V rocket at 7:50am ET (12;50pm BST), the rocket’s payload – featuring the rover Perseverance – hit speeds of 10,000mph (16,000 kph) as it powered into orbit.
Once on Mars, the $2.1billion (£1.6billion) rover will hunt for microscopic fossils in Mars’s ancient Jezero crater.
The crater once held a large lake that would have been the ideal spot for life to thrive billions of years ago.
Perseverance will also test spacesuit materials and the planet’s atmosphere as Nasa plans manned trips to the Red Planet in the 2030s.
A small drone called Ingenuity is strapped to the rover’s belly and will attempt the first powered flight on Mars.
The Mars 2020 mission is expected to touch down on the Red Planet in February 2021.
