Nasa’s Mars Perseverance rover has safely landed on the red planet, marking an “amazing accomplishment”, the space agency has announced. Its mission is to search for signs of ancient life, and explore and collect samples for future return to Earth from diverse environments on Mars. Perseverance will spend the coming years scouring for signs of ancient microbial life in a mission that will bring back samples from Mars to Earth and prepare the way for future human visitors. The successful landing of the rover was met with applause and loud cheers across eight rooms as the teams were split up in order to be Covid secure.