Perseverance

This handout image obtained on July 26, 2024 courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS shows a reddish rock nicknamed "Cheyava Falls" in Mars' Jezero Crater on Juy 18, 2024, in an image captured by NASA's Perseverance rover.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has made what could be its most astonishing discovery to date: possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which made history by achieving the first powered flight on another world, has officially ended its nearly three-year mission after sustaining rotor damage during its last outing, the space agency said Thursday.

Perseverance and Ingenuity littered Mars with wreckage

As well as looking for microbial life, the rover will also bring back samples of Martian geology

There is no liquid water on Mars at the moment, but icy and frozen water has been discovered beneath the surface crust, according to a NASA expert.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Umut Yıldız said there have been significant developments in Turkey's science facilities recently.

NASA confirmed on Sept. 6 that its Perseverance Mars rover succeeded in collecting its first rock sample for scientists to pore over when a future mission eventually brings it back to Earth.

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"I've got it!" the space agency tweeted, alongside a photograph of a rock core slightly thicker than a pencil inside a sample tube.

It was only supposed to fly five times. And yet NASA's helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, has completed 12 flights and it isn't ready to retire.

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Given its stunning and unexpected success, the U.S. space agency has extended Ingenuity's mission indefinitely.

The collection of samples, which NASA marked as a turning point, will begin in the next two weeks. "We are on the threshold of a new era of planetary science and discovery", said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters.

Its perseverance is rewriting the history of life, and of ice, across the continent

China's probe to Mars touched down on the Red Planet on May 15 to deploy its Zhurong rover, state media reported, a triumph for Beijing's bold space ambitions and a history-making feat for a nation on its first-ever Martian mission.