A NASA rover streaked through the orange Martian sky and landed on the planet Thursday, accomplishing the riskiest step yet in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on Mars.

NASA has launched its new Mars rover, Perseverance, on a six-month journey to the Red Planet as part of an ambitious, long-range project to bring the first Martian rock samples back to Earth to be analysed for evidence of ancient life, reports AP.