Former US astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to ever walk on the surface of the Moon, has tweeted a short video showing him applauding the scientists responsible for today's successful mission.

Aldrin, 91, has been a vocal advocate for human missions to Mars.

Image source, NASA

Perseverance carried the first spacesuit material samples ever sent to Mars.

Nasa advanced spacesuit designer Amy Ross said the materials are meant to be on the outermost layer of the spacesuit - which will be exposed to the most radiation.

"There's ortho-fabric, something we have a lot of experience using on the outside of spacesuits. That's three materials in one: It includes Nomex, a flame-resistant material found in firefighter outfits; Gore-Tex, which is waterproof but breathable; and Kevlar, which has been used in bulletproof vests," she said.

They are also testing Vectran - a cut-resistant fabric currently used on spacesuit gloves - Teflon and polycarbonate.

As these materials are exposed to radiation on Mars they will weaken. Scientists want to know how long they last under such conditions.

We're now awaiting a press conference from the Nasa Mars mission HQ in Pasadena, California.

We'll bring you all the latest updates as we learn exactly how successful the today's mission was.

Image source, NASA

A former commander of the International Space Station, Dr Leroy Chiao, says it's an "incredible day" for Nasa, in pulling off "the most complicated and difficult landing ever attempted".

Speaking on the BBC News Channel, he said Perseverance, like other uncrewed probes, paves the way for future astronauts to land on Mars.

A veteran of four space missions, Dr Chiao has logged over 229 days in space – over 36 hours of which were spent on spacewalks. He says he's keeping his fingers crossed for the first test flight of the mini helicopter.

Image source, NASA

Have we already captured a hint of present-day life on the Red Planet?

There's an intriguing phenomenon on Mars that could point to microbes living under the surface of the Red Planet today.

In 2004, the European Space Agency's (Esa) Mars Express spacecraft detected methane in the atmosphere of Mars in the parts per billion range. Nasa scientist Michael Mumma also presented evidence from ground telescopes of the gas in Mars' thin air.

The finding was of interest because the vast majority of methane on Earth is produced by life.

There's a catch, however. Biology is not the only way methane can be produced, and so the methane can't be taken as solid evidence of microbial life. There are many ways it could be produced without micro-organisms, including a series of chemical reactions called serpentinisation, deep in the Martian sub-surface.

Nasa's Curiosity rover has detected irregular "burps" of atmospheric methane from its landing site at Gale Crater.

Esa's Trace Gas Orbiter has been gathering long-term observations of gases such as methane in the Martian atmosphere. The results could provide a better idea of what's going on.

Mars is an inhospitable place today - with little chance for liquid water on the surface and an environment that's blasted by cosmic radiation.

But beneath the rust-coloured landscape, conditions might be warmer, wetter and therefore more hospitable for micro-organisms. It's a slim chance, but just within the realms of possibility.

Online, people have quickly turned from awe to jokes, as a plethora of memes are spawned by today's successful Mars landing.

Matt Damon, the actor who starred in 2015 film The Martian, about an astronaut stuck on the surface of Mars, has been trending in the past hour.

"The rescue of Matt Damon begins," wrote one Twitter jokester.

Others have photoshopped in a picture of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose rumpled pose at US President Joe Biden's inauguration last month went viral.

To commemorate the successful landing, a cover of David Bowie's iconic song Life on Mars was sung by UK musician Yungblud.

In an interview with BBC The One Show, the Doncaster-native described what it was like to hear that Nasa had selected him to perform today.

"That sounds like someone completely off their head, telling you a mad story," he said.

Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website

Image source, NASA

Perseverance is Nasa's most ambitious search for life on Mars since the Viking landers in the 1970s.

"The more recent Nasa approach has been to explore ancient environments because the data we have suggest that the earliest history of the planet tells us that Mars was most habitable during its first billion years," the mission's deputy project scientist Ken Williford told me.

The rover carries science instruments that will be able to look for the chemical signatures of life in Martian rocks. These could include organic (carbon-containing) compounds.

It will also be able to search for visual signs of biology, such as fossilised microbial communities.

You can read how Perseverance will search for life here.

The helicopter onboard Perseverance, Ingenuity, will switch on tomorrow for a check-out, says its project director Mimi Aung

Five flight missions are planned over a 30 (Martian) day period, which will hopefully provide high-quality images of the Martian surface.

They will be the first flights done remotely on the surface of another planet.

"Being able to fly will enable us to get to hard-to-reach places," like cliff-sides, she says, and other "areas of high scientific interest".

"It will be game-changing," she says, with a massive smile beaming across her face.

Colour images, she says, "will be the icing on the cake".

The rover will first need to drive to an appropriate site for the helicopter experiment. This means the flight programme is likely to get under way no earlier than late March.

With the landing over, work now begins for the team operating the rover. They'll be working on Mars time - Mars days are about 40 minutes longer than Earth days. Overnight, they'll be checking out the rover's key functions and scientific instruments.

Surface Mission Manager Jessica Samuels says the rover will now perform key "checkouts" to make sure that everything is still operational after landing.

"We're all so excited and we can't wait," she says.

The rover will power its batteries overnight "as it sleeps" she tells a pupil who asks how the rover will "survive" on the harsh Martian surface.

"It's amazing," says Nasa's acting administrator Steve Jurczyk.

The challenge of landing a rover on Mars was made even more difficult due to coronavirus-mitigation measures, he says, making today even more amazing.

Perseverance will act as a "scout for future rover missions" he says.

He also says the landing manoeuvre, which went according to plan, will make it much easier to send future mission to Mars.

The second photo taken by Perseverance has just arrived.

The camera lenses are still dusty from the landing, according to scientists.

Image source, NASA

Here's the first photo captured by Perseverance.

Image source, NASA

Scientists at Nasa's control centre in California are now cheering and fistbumping eachother in joy.

"We got it. We're there!" they are heard cheering.

"Perseverance is alive on the surface of Mars," according to engineers in the control room.

The Perseverance Mars rover has successfully landed on the surface of Mars, according to Nasa scientists.

The successful landing was confirmed by radio messages sent back to Earth from the Jezero Crater - an ancient lake that will be studied for years to come.

The spacecraft has now entered the Martian atmosphere, at times feeling pressures of about 10 times the gravity of Earth.

The craft has just deployed its parachute successfully. With 12km to go before touchdown, the spacecraft is now decelerated to subsonic speeds.

Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

Image source, Getty Images

Much is made of the difficulty of mounting Mars missions, and it's true many have failed. But the statistics actually favour Perseverance. Of the 14 landing attempts at the planet, eight have been successful - all of them American.

Indeed, Nasa has only got it wrong once, way back in 1999. That was the ill-fated Mars Polar lander mission. But no-one in Nasa is blasé about what lies ahead for Perseverance.

This is what deputy project manager Matt Wallace had to say: "You just have to factor in, again, the complexity of this system: we've got two million lines of software code running hundreds of thousands of electronic parts. We've got miles of copper conductors.

"We've got more than 70 pyrotechnic devices that all have to fire; closed-loop guidance and navigation control systems that really have to operate with sub-second precision for all of this to work.

"There are no go-backs; there are no retries. It's a difficult and dangerous part of the mission. And I think you have to always respect that as a development team, and I think our team has."

Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

Image source, NASA

Mission control will follow the rover's descent in three ways.

Perseverance itself is sending back some tones that carry basic information on the major events in the timeline, such as parachute deployment. These tones come straight back to Earth and are picked up by radio antennas in the US and Europe.

The slight issue here is that Earth sets below Mars' horizon and loses line of sight to Jezero about half-way through the descent sequence, so there will be no tones to describe the actual moment of landing.

The main line of communication is through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will be flying over Jezero at landing time. It will relay a wider set of telemetry. MRO will convey this information all the way through landing and for a few minutes after, before it also goes over the horizon.

Nasa has a back-up, as you'd expect. The same information that MRO receives is being recorded on a second satellite called Maven, but this version won't be available until about 10 hours after landing because of different processing demands.

One thing to stress: none of this affects Perseverance in its job of landing. If the comms go down, the rover will still go through its automated tasks. It will be frustrating if we don't have confirmation the robot is down safely at 20:55 GMT, but you shouldn't immediately jump to conclusions if that signal isn't there. It may just take the engineers a little longer to establish precisely what happened.