China became the second country in the world to successfully land a rover on Mars after its Zhurong craft touched down on the red planet.

Named after the Chinese god of fire, Zhurong was aboard the Tianwen-1 spacecraft that launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in China on July 23, 2020. It entered Mars' orbit in February before finally landing around 7:18 p.m. EDT on Friday.

It took more than 17 minutes after the rover opened its solar panels and antenna for signals to traverse the distance between Mars and Earth, according to The Associated Press.

NASA’s Perseverance rover landed safely on the surface of Mars last week, giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study the distant planet. The rover’s main missions are to seek out signs of microbial life in the martian soil and test new technologies that could benefit future space exploration.

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.

Ground controllers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, leaped to their feet, thrust their arms in the air and cheered in both triumph and relief on receiving confirmation that the six-wheeled Perseverance had touched down on the red planet, long a deathtrap for incoming spacecraft.

NASA kicked off a new era of Mars exploration Thursday with the successful landing of Perseverance, a car-size robotic explorer that will search for traces of ancient life on the planet and collect what could be the first rocky samples from Mars that are sent back to Earth.

The rover touched down at around 3:55 p.m. ET, after executing a daring and dramatic landing that had been nicknamed the "seven minutes of terror." Perseverance is now NASA's fifth rover to land on Mars and is set to begin a two-year mission to roam its surface and search for signs of ancient microbial life.

Three new underground lakes have been detected near the south pole of Mars.

Scientists also confirmed the existence of a fourth lake - the presence of which was hinted at in 2018.

Liquid water is vital for biology, so the finding will be of interest to researchers studying the potential for life elsewhere in the Solar System.

But the lakes are also thought to be extremely salty, which could make it difficult for any microbial life to survive in them.

A small amount of a certain stinky gas in Venus’ clouds has astronomers abuzz. In a paper published today in Nature Astronomy, astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University and her team have announced that they detected a small amount of phosphine high in Venus’ cloudy atmosphere.

On Earth, phosphine is produced by bacteria in oxygen-starved environments such as swamps or wetlands. As Ashley Strickland notes for CNN, it’s also known for its overpowering odor, which has been compared to rotting fish or garlic.

Others have gone before. Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity have all roved the surface, beaming home tantalizing images. But now, a new envoy is en route to Mars – one that could fundamentally change how we see the red planet and our place in the universe.

NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, launched from Cape Canaveral at 7:50 this morning atop an Atlas V-541 rocket. If all goes well, it is set to touch down in Jezero, a 28-mile-wide crater north of Mars’ equator, at about 3 p.m. Eastern time on February 18, 2021.

For science-fiction writers, Mars always has been a blank slate on which to write our hopes and project our fears. Ray Bradbury imagined a Mars settled by farmers who cover the red planet with idyllic midwestern American towns. Robert Heinlein, swept up in 1960s counterculture, imagined a Mars where gnostic aliens teach free love, spiritual wisdom and psychic powers to a hippy messiah.

After decades of sending missions to Mars, NASA is now zeroing in on regions of the red planet that they think have the best chance of determining whether the world has hosted — or hosts — life.

The big picture: Scientists are now able to point to parts of Mars that were once likely wet and warm, with geological signatures similar to the rivers, deltas and lakes on Earth — upping the odds that those parts of Mars could have once been friendly to life.

It has been more than five decades since humans first set foot on another world, and as memories of the Apollo 11 mission recede, the stars beckon mankind to make its next giant leap.

This time, humanity has set its sights on the fourth planet from the sun, Mars. A settlement on the red planet has long been a staple of science fiction. But today, scientists and engineers are working to make these dreams a reality.