The Rover is called Perseverance, taking seven months from take off to land on Mars. The flight is the first human powered flight on another planet and is Nasa’s fifth rover to be sent onto Mars. The main aim of the mission is to find the first evidence of life outside earth.

In order to get to Mars in the first place, the rover had to travel around 300 million miles, and reached speeds of around 50,000 miles an hour. It took the rover seven minutes to get from the top of the atmosphere to land on the surface, however sending a signal from earth to Mars takes 12 minutes, meaning that humans could not control the flight, and so by the time humans could see the images of the Rover from the on-board cameras, the Rover had landed five minutes beforehand. In order to slow down the rover, thrusters steered the Rover to the landing spot, which has gotten progressively smaller each time the Rover has landed, demonstrating the advance in technology. A parachute slowed the Rover down to 200mph, however, to slow the Rover down more, the back shelf broke off, before rockets were fired, and the Rover was lowered from a 6 metre rope down onto the surface, landing at 3 miles an hour.

The Rover had many new technological devices on board, as NASA has advanced. In order to give the Rover energy, there were nuclear powered batteries that would not run out, whilst there were 19 cameras to send back the best possible images to NASA. The Rover landed on a past river called the Jezero Crater in order to have the best chance of finding past life. If the Rover is to find life, this will be the first evidence of life on a different planet for humans. Another new component was MOXIE, which converts Carbon Dioxide to Oxygen from the atmosphere, which will be needed for future mission for humans to be able to breathe. A hollow drill will take out 43 samples of rocks, which will be packaged up and sent back to earth for closer examination.

The Rover took many people from NASA multiple years to build. In order to build the Rover successfully, a chamber recreated the temperatures and pressure on Mars, in order for the Rover to be tested in the correct conditions. Many different prototypes were built, testing out different features of the Rover, for example how easy it is for the Rover to drive around obstacles, or testing the landing. The Rover is the most complex thing humans have ever built to go onto another planet, and has successfully landed, and is currently bringing back vital information to NASA, with the hope of Mars become habitable for humans in the future.