Mars rover Perseverance hours away from monumental landing
NASA’s Perseverance rover will complete its seven-month journey to the Red Planet today.
From 20:48 tonight, the robot will have to put itself down onto the surface of Mars – a task that has proven too difficult for many rovers before.
If Perseverance is successful in landing, it will give NASA the opportunity of a lifetime to study Mars for signs of past life in more detail than ever before.
The intended touchdown location, the Jezero Crater, is an ancient river delta and a former lake.
Full of obstacles that could prove problematic for the rover – high cliffs, falls and boulders – the surface of the crater could potentially end the journey of the robot in both the landing and the exploration phase.
Credit: NASA JPL/Christian Mangano
The Jezero Crater is known to be rich in clay minerals that only form in the presence of a water source, meaning that there may be evidence of fossils and microscopic life on the Martian surface.
There are 19 cameras equipped on the rover itself and a further four on other parts of the spacecraft to capture entry, descent and landing as it happens.
If the landing goes to plan, people will be able to watch in real time as raw photos are processed in HD and experience watch what it is like to land on Mars.
Here are the key times to lookout for tonight:
- Contact with Martian atmosphere: 20:48
- Parachute deployed: 20:52
- Powered descent: 20:54
- Wheels down: 20:55
Perseverance launched on 30 July 2020 and will be the first NASA spacecraft to land on Mars since the InSight robotic probe in November 2018.
With transmissions taking at least 10 minutes to reach us on Earth, by the time we see that Perseverance has entered the Red Planet’s atmosphere it will either have landed safely or have been destroyed.
You can read more about the rover here.
You can watch the event tonight live on NASA’s YouTube channel below.
