Jacob Pinter

Then, the craziest part.

Rocket engines on the descent stage fired, stopping it in midair.

And at the same time, the rover came into focus on the cameras.

It slowly lowered to the surface on cables.

There's a tradition at JPL.

To make working the long, hard hours of Mars time a little sweeter, Mission Control has a chest full of ice cream.

So some of Katie's colleagues improvised the pandemic version.

They had ice cream delivered to her front door.

Now it's time for us to get down to business.

Through the Artemis program, NASA is sending humans to the moon.

NASA's building a moon base.

And one day, astronauts will walk on Mars.

Landing humans on Mars is a hard goal.

It doesn't happen all at once.

NASA science has been laying the groundwork for human exploration for years.

And Katie says perseverance is one step on that path.

Along with its science goals, which we'll get into, Perseverance is exploring Mars before humans get there and testing technologies that will need to stay alive on the planet.

Mars is one of humanity's prime targets in the search for life beyond Earth.

In fact, Perseverance's main goal is to find evidence of ancient life on Mars.

Perseverance has spent more than five years exploring Mars, first in Jezero crater, and now after a long and arduous climb along the crater's northern rim.