Update: Perseverance has landed and is transmitting data from the surface of Mars.
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The USA's latest Mars Rover mission approaches a critical moment: setting its most sophisticated lander yet on the surface.
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The USA's latest Mars Rover mission approaches a critical moment: setting its most sophisticated lander yet on the surface.
NASA describes this as an astrobiology mission. Perseverance has instruments that might detect structures consistent with ancient life on the Red Planet. Or those instruments might detect nothing remotely suggestive of life. Either way, NASA wants the soil samples back for study in laboratories, hoping to answer fundamental questions about life in the solar system and beyond. Finding a second data point for life would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science.
But first the engineers have to pull off the EDL — the entry, descent and landing. It is the hardest part of the mission, fraught with opportunities for what aerospace engineers call “a bad day.” The EDL requires a heat shield, a parachute, rocket thrusters and a sky crane that finally lowers the rover to the surface. All these things have to work with exquisite precision and entirely autonomously.

Video: Watch Live: NASA’s Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars
NASA’s robotic explorer, Perseverance, will reach Mars on Thursday afternoon, and attempt a difficult landing.

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NASA Television provides live coverage of launches, spacewalks and other mission events, as well as the latest news briefings, video files, and the This Week @NASA report.
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