Nasa's Perseverance: Touchdown on Mars for rover

Video caption, Watch the moment the Nasa Perseverance rover landed on Mars

"Touchdown confirmed" - there is a new robot on Mars!

The American space agency, Nasa, has successfully landed its Perseverance rover in a deep crater near the planet's equator called Jezero.

It's the first time a science mission has gone to Mars with such an advanced set of equipment, and it is the first time a robot has been sent to such a promising location in terms of finding past life.

The engineers in Nasa HQ were delighted when they were given confirmation that the rover had landed, with many jumping for joy at the news.

They had been very nervous before the touchdown because landing on Mars is very difficult and it's only the second time Nasa has done so with a rover weighing more than one tonne.

"The good news is the spacecraft, I think, is in great shape," said Matt Wallace, the mission's deputy project manager.

Image source, Reuters

Image caption, Here is the first image taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars - you can spot the shadow of the rover's robotic arm

The six-wheeled robot landed after a 470 million-km (292 million-mile) journey from Earth.

It will now spend the next two years drilling into rocks, looking for evidence of past life.

Jezero is thought to have been home to a giant lake billions of years ago.

Scientists believe that where there has been water, then there is the possibility life might also have existed.

Image source, Reuters

The name Perseverance was chosen by Alexander Mather, a 13-year-old student from Virginia in the US, who took part in Nasa's competition to name the robot.

Perseverance will spend the first few days taking lots of pictures to help the scientists work out the terrain a bit more.

Then, Nasa hopes to run a helicopter experiment which, if successful, will be the first ever powered flight in another world.

Image source, NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image caption, One tonne of high technology: Seven instruments, multiple cameras, microphones and a big drill

Once this has been attempted, Perseverance will move towards the rim of the crater in Jezero.

This is where scientists believe they'll have the best chance of finding evidence of ancient water.

Perseverance's most interesting rock finds will be packaged into small tubes to be left on the surface.

Nasa and the European Space Agency (Esa) then hope to send a second rover in a multi-billion dollar mission to collect these cylinders towards the end of the decade.

Scientists think that returning physical samples from Mars is the next logical step in exploration of Mars.

Physically having the rocks will help Nasa because it'll be able to use more sophisticated technology to analyse whether there has been life on the red planet.