NASA Reveals First Color Images Of Mars Taken By Perseverance Rover After Historic Landing

• NASA’s 2020 Perseverance rover has sent its first images taken in Mars following its recent landing on the planet.
• According to NASA, the rover’s mission is to conduct “astrobiology research, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.”
• The rover is also expected to pave the way for future “human exploration of the Red Planet.”

After its historic landing on Mars last Thursday, January 18, NASA’s 2020 Perseverance rover has sent the first images it captured in the Red Planet. NASA shared the photos during a recent press conference, describing them as “exhilarating.”

Unlike earlier rovers, Perseverance has a camera capable of capturing images in color. Now we know what it exactly looks like out there!

Perseverance’s first color image taken on the surface of Mars.

According to the NASA website, the Perseverance’s primary mission on Mars is “astrobiology research, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.”

The rover will also “characterize the planet’s geology and past climate and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet,” the site further shared.

The rover also spotted rocks with holes, which has sparked the curiosity of scientists as to what caused them in the first place.

The Perseverance heading to the landing site.

Meanwhile, Perseverance chief engineer Adam Steltzner said about the landing:

“The team is overwhelmed with excitement and joy to have successfully landed another rover on the surface of Mars. When we do such investments, we do them for humanity, and we do them as a gesture of our humanity.”

“We can only hope, in our efforts to engineer spacecraft and explore our solar system, that we might be able contribute yet another iconic image to this collection, and I’m happy to say that I’m hopeful that today we can with this,” added Steltzner.

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