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After a seven month voyage from Earth the American space agency NASA has safely landed its first rover on Mars in nearly a decade.

The Perseverance rover is being sent to a crater called Jezero where it will search for evidence of past life, and collect samples of rock and soil which it will leave them on the planet's surface for return to Earth at a future date. In addition, a drone-like helicopter will be deployed to demonstrate the first powered flight on Mars.

Moogega Cooper has worked on the project for more than seven years as Planetary Protection Lead for NASA 2020. She says there are better, colour photos to come very soon.

"Engineers are impatient so we thought let's get a very compressed low-res, black and white version of what the actual real picture is... but with the high-res photos rolling in now, I've taken some sneak peaks and they look gorgeous."

(Photo: one of the first low-res pictures from Perserverance. Credit: NASA handout)