Perseverance è su Marte

Metterci = to take time

“La notizia ci ha messo 12 minuti ad arrivare sulla Terra”
(The news took 12 minutes to reach Earth)

In this sentence, the phrase “ci ha messo” is used to indicate the time it took for the news to arrive on Earth.

The verb “metterci” is an idiomatic expression that means “to take time” or “to require time”. It is used with the preposition “ci” to indicate the amount of time something takes.
For example, “ci metto 30 minuti ad arrivare a casa” means “it takes me 30 minutes to get home” or “I need 30 minutes to get home”.

In our sentence, “ci ha messo” means “it took” or “it required” and “12 minuti” is the amount of time it took for the news to arrive on Earth.
The sentence can be translated as “The news, however, took 12 minutes to arrive on Earth.”