[SpaceDaily] With about 2.4 million miles (3.9 million kilometers) left to travel in space, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is days away from attempting to land the agency's fifth rover on the Red Planet. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the mission is managed, have confirmed that the spacecraft is healthy and on target to touch down in Jezero Crater at around 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST) on Feb. 18, 2021.
"Perseverance is NASA's most ambitious Mars rover mission yet, focused scientifically on finding out whether there was ever any life on Mars in the past," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "To answer this question, the landing team will have its hands full getting us to Jezero Crater - the most challenging Martian terrain ever targeted for a landing."
Jezero is a basin where scientists believe an ancient river flowed into a lake and deposited sediments in a fan shape known as a delta. Scientists think the environment here was likely to have preserved signs of any life that gained a foothold billions of years ago - but Jezero also has steep cliffs, sand dunes, and boulder fields. Landing on Mars is difficult - only about 50% of all previous Mars landing attempts have succeeded - and these geological features make it even more so. The Perseverance team is building on lessons from previous touchdowns and employing new technologies that enable the spacecraft to target its landing site more accurately and avoid hazards autonomously.
"The Perseverance team is putting the final touches on the complex choreography required to land in Jezero Crater," said Jennifer Trosper, deputy project manager for the mission at JPL. "No Mars landing is guaranteed, but we have been preparing a decade to put this rover's wheels down on the surface of Mars and get to work."
You will get to watch the drama of Perseverance's entry, descent, and landing (EDL) - the riskiest portion of the rover's mission that some engineers call the "seven minutes of terror" - live on NASA TV. Commentary starts at 2:15 p.m. EST (11:15 a.m. PST) on Feb. 18. Engineers expect to receive notice of key milestones for landing at the estimated times below. (Because of the distance the signals have to travel from Mars to Earth, these events actually take place on Mars 11 minutes, 22 seconds earlier than what is noted here.) |