Ready to begin speaking the stands of past life.

Oh, I love a man so invested in his work you couldn't see There was Jonathan punching air punching air at that moment that he touched down.

He loves it.

Look at him.

His work is complete.

That was fantastic.

Was textbook, wasn't it, Jonathan?

It was absolutely perfect.

It really waas I mean, you know, there was a lot of acronyms in there which only sort of geeks like myself really understand.

But, you know, there were There were moments when it was when it was on the surface and they had toe Wait, I spoke to you about those pyrotechnics, didn't I?

About how they have to cut them.

The last pyrotechnics that fire cut the cables.

Andi, they have to be sure that they've cut the sky.

Crane doesn't drag the rover away because those cables won't cut.

And so you heard them say rim you stable.

That meant the rover wasn't moving.

U h f was stable.

That meant that the sky crane hadn't crashed down on top on dso Once They've heard all of that, they waited a few seconds and then they declared it Touchdown confirmed.

Absolutely beautiful.

You know, You know what we have to reflect on this?

Well, is this is such an international effort.

We're looking at the control room there at NASA.

But when that parachute deployed, there was a little team in Tiverton in Devon that were jumping for joy.

There's a small company.

They're called Heathcote Fabrics and they make parachutes from lace and silk, and they'd be making parachutes since the Second World War.

And they now make the parachute for this rover to descend onto the Martian surface.

Quite extraordinary.

Really.

And there are little teams like that all around the world that have contributed to this Jonathan.

And can I can I just jump in?

Because we do have some breaking news.

Apart from the fact that perseverance has landed on Mars, the rover has tweeted already.

I'm safe on Mars.

Perseverance will get you anywhere.

Hash down, Countdown to Mars.

Great.

Talk to me about those teams around the world, Jonathan.

I mean, who's contributed to this?

Well, there are some big contributions that have done through bilateral agreements that NASA has with other space agencies.

So, for example, example the French have produced one of the laser type instruments that the rover is going to use.

The Spanish have provided the weather system that it has, but yeah, they've got all sorts of people working on it, you know?

I mean, one of the one of the scientists that's planned.

The route is British.

There's everybody who's got a finger in that pie.

I should say that the thing that I'm waiting for now is is a picture of jazz R O Crater.

This rover was programmed as soon as you touched down.

You take a picture in front and you take a picture back behind that.

Send them straight to work.

This question is, it's It should come back very, very soon.

Very soon, indeed.

Is that it?

Yes.

So come on, plane.

Jonathan, What we've seen so far there is what we That's the picture.

There it is already.

So I thought it was going to take 11 minutes.

That is the picture that isn't made.

No, no, no, no.

Eso What they were hoping to do was to get a picture back before the satellite which has relayed this disappeared over the horizon, and then they'd have to wait several hours until another one came over.

This this tells the engineers what the surface is like that they've landed on.

I mean, you can see from that were to me that looks like the front of the rover.

You could just see the elbow of the robotic arm there on B A picture come that will come from the back.

Actually, you could tell that that's the robotic arm there because you can see the shadow of the equipment there on the ground, but they'll have a picture from behind a swell.

What I'm hoping is that we'll see that cliff, which is the target of where they want Thio Thio in the next a few months.

Now, of course, they can put it down to within a few 100 m.

They can't actually tell you which orientation it's going to be.

Well, let them off with that.

But amazing to get this picture overnight.

Tonight we may get the first of these little movies that were taken from the vehicle as it came down.

You'll see the ground approaching the rover as it neared the surface of Mars, but it's terrific.

This is what it's all about.

Now we've got several years ahead of us.

Thio trundle around this crater and and, you know, potentially make the greatest ever scientific discovery.

What bigger scientific discovery is there than to detect life beyond Earth?

There really isn't is there and you know, even if it doesn't, that's really interesting.

Well, you know, if we don't detect life on Mars, we then have to ask ourselves, Well, why didn't way we know that it was habitable 3.5 4 billion years ago.

Why wasn't there life on Mars like there was on Earth?

And, you know, it's kind of you start thinking, Well, maybe there has to be some sort of special spark.

It's not a case that, you know, you build it and they come that life just happens.

There needs to be something special that occurs Clearly happened on Earth.

Did it happen on Mars?

That's what we want.

Perseverance to tell us.