<p class="p1">Flight controllers for Nasa Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission have returned the spacecraft to nominal flight operations, the US space agency has said.</p>
<p class="p1">Launched on July 30, Mars 2020 entered a state called "safe mode" soon after it was placed on an interplanetary trajectory because a sensor indicated that part of the spacecraft was slightly colder than expected.</p>
<p class="p1">When a spacecraft enters safe mode, all but essential systems are turned off until it receives new commands from mission control.</p>
<p class="p1">"With safe mode exit, the team is getting down to the business of interplanetary cruise," Mars 2020 Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement yesterday.</p>
<p class="p1">The rover will land at Mars' Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.</p>
<p class="p1">The mission — designed to better understand the geology and climate of Mars and seek signs of ancient life on the Red Planet — will use the robotic scientist to collect and store a set of rock and soil samples that could be returned to Earth by future Mars sample return missions.</p>
<p class="p1">The primary goal of the mission is to answer one of the key questions of astrobiology: Are there potential signs of past microbial life, or biosignatures on the Red Planet?</p>
<p class="p1">The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.</p>
<p class="p1">Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, Nasa aims to establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through the agency's Artemis programme.</p>.