Watch: ​Perseverance Rover's Mars Lands On The Red Planet

PASADENA, CA — Hurtling toward a Martian crater at 12,100 mph and a scorching 2,370 degrees, NASA'S Perseverance rover successfully touched down Thursday on the surface of the Red Planet.

Minutes after the landing was confirmed at 12:55 p.m. California time, the rover's first photographs from the surface of Mars were displayed on screens at JPL, giving mission managers a view of Perseverance's mostly smooth but rock-dotted new home, where it will begin its search for signs of ancient life.

The rover touched down in what's known as the Jezero Crater, which is believed to have housed an ancient body of water the size of Lake Tahoe.

The landing sparked cheers at the mission control center at JPL, where the anxiety of the "seven minutes of terror" landing procedure had scientists and mission managers visibly on edge.

"What a credit to the team," acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said. "What an amazing team, to work through all the adversity and all the challenges that go with landing a rover on Mars, plus the challenges of COVID. Just an amazing accomplishment."

Perseverance, the most technologically advanced rover ever sent to Mars, completed a 292-million-mile journey to the red planet. Built at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Perseverance represents NASA's most ambitious exploration of Mars. Its nearly seven month-journey culminated in the supersonic entrance into the Martian atmosphere dubbed the "seven minutes of terror" as mission managers depend on the spacecraft's on-board computers to guide the rover safely to the surface of Mars.

It's a terrifying stretch, worsened by the helplessness of mission managers since the distance made instantaneous communication infeasible. Because of the time it takes for signals from the rover to reach Earth, the JPL team didn't know if Perseverance survived the landing until 11 minutes later.

"No Mars landing is guaranteed, but we have been preparing a decade to put this rover's wheels down on the surface of Mars and get to work," said Jennifer Trosper, deputy project manager for the mission at JPL.

Perseverance's primary mission is detecting signs of ancient life on a planet that has fascinated scientists and science-fiction buffs for decades. The rover will also be the first leg in a multi-pronged effort to transport samples of Martian soil back to Earth for the first time. The SUV-sized rover is also carrying an astronomical first -- a small helicopter dubbed Ingenuity that will become the first such craft to fly on another planet.

"Perseverance is NASA's most ambitious Mars rover mission yet, focused scientifically on finding out whether there was ever any life on Mars in the past," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "To answer this question, the landing team will have its hands full getting us to Jezero Crater -- the most challenging Martian terrain ever targeted for a landing."

The rover launched from Cape Canaveral on July 30, 2020, propelled on its way by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

It's the final seven minutes of its flight through space that made history.

After landing, the rover will first snap photos of its landing site and transmit them back to mission managers, who will assess the health of the rover and deploy a "sensing mast," or "head," so more photos can be taken. It will then take more than a month for a thorough inspection of all the rover's systems and for an upload of software -- the instructions for the rover's mission on the Red Planet.

Last year, Katie Stack Morgan, a deputy project scientist at JPL, said the rover's landing spot, Jezero Crater, is home to "one of the best preserved deltas on the surface of Mars." She said the location will give the rover access to some of the oldest rocks in the solar system.

The study of those samples will address "some big-picture questions," she said, including "how did the surface and climate of Mars evolve over time, how do rocky planets form and differentiate, and, of course, was life ever present on Mars."

Perseverance includes an array of scientific instruments, and it will make space history on at least two fronts:

• the rover is equipped with a mini helicopter that will become the first ever flown on another planet; and
• Perseverance will also collect rocks and soil that will be stored for a future return to Earth, marking the beginning of an unprecedented round- trip journey to another planet.

The historic recovery of Mars soil and rock samples will be done in partnership with the European Space Agency. The Perseverance rover will drill and collect samples, then store them on the surface of the planet. Current plans call for the launch of a "fetch rover" in 2026 that will collect the samples, place them in a rocket that will launch from the surface of Mars, rendezvousing with an orbiter that will capture the samples and return them to Earth.

The "Ingenuity" helicopter, meanwhile, will allow for a wider exploration of the planet's surface.

Perseverance's primary science mission is astrobiological, searching for signs of ancient life. The mission is a natural extension of earlier rover missions that have uncovered evidence that the planet once featured running water. Scientists believe such water flowed in an ancient river and poured into a lake -- in what is now Jezero Crater.

Mission managers said the 28-mile-wide crater in Mars' northern hemisphere was home to a lake roughly the size of Lake Tahoe, roughly 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists hope the sediments that were dumped into the lake preserved organic molecules and other signs of microbial life.

According to NASA, Perseverance has four main science objectives.

• Study the rocks and landscape at its landing site to reveal the region’s history
• Determine whether an area of interest was suitable for life, and look for signs of ancient life itself
• Find and collect promising samples of Mars rock and soil that could be brought back to Earth in the future
• Test technologies that would help sustain human presence on Mars someday

Some of its additional scientific equipment will also help pave the way for future human missions to the moon and Mars. The rover is scheduled to operate for about two Earth years — or one Martian year.

Also aboard the rover: the names of 10.9 million people who signed up online. The names are included on three silicon chips embedded on a plate emblazoned with the words "Explore as one" — in Morse Code.

City News Service and Patch Saffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.