NASA's Perseverance bound for Mars

NASA's latest Mars rover Perseverance launched on July 30 on an astrobiology mission to look for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet - and to fly a helicopter-drone on another world for the first time.

Previous trips to Mars have discovered it was far warmer and wetter three billion years ago than it is today, creating the conditions necessary for carbon-based life.

Perseverance's goal is to go a step further, and discover whether "habitable" translated to "habited."

"There would be no bigger discovery in the history of humanity than finding life that is not on our own world," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said.

"If we were to make a discovery that it in fact was, everything from that point forward is going to be 'Okay, what other life is out there? How do we get to it? How do we study it?'"

An Atlas V rocket carrying Perseverance's spaceship took off on schedule at 7:50 am (1150 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and its stages separated according to plan.

But as the spacecraft passed through the Earth's shadow, the temperature of a heating system dropped, triggering a "safe mode" that switched off all but essential systems.

NASA said it hadn't encountered this problem before because previous spaceships followed a different flight path, but added the issue was not serious and the vessel would soon be back in normal mode.

"The philosophy is that it is far better to trigger a safe mode event when not required, than miss one that is," the agency said.

If all goes to plan, Perseverance will reach Mars on February 18, 2021, becoming the fifth rover to complete the voyage since 1997.

So far, all have been American. China launched its first Mars rover last week, which should arrive...