Perseverance was launched last July from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The robot car weighing about 1000 kilos is packed with numerous measuring instruments and cameras. The rover also has a drill that can take soil samples and place them in tubes for transport to Earth.
Ultimately, with the soil samples, scientists hope to better understand what conditions were like on Mars billions of years ago, when the planet had an even denser atmosphere and water flowed.
The mission of Perseverance, which costs more than 2 billion euros, is of great importance to NASA, which has focused on Mars research and manned missions far into space in recent years.
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