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The countdown has begun as NASA s Mars rover Perseverance prepares to land on the red planet.
Perseverance will be the agency’s fifth rover to land on Mars, and engineers managing the mission at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern Californiasaid that the rover was on track to descend at Mars Jezero Crater at approximately 3:55 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Scientists picked the 28-mile-wide crater after a five-year study of more than 60 potential sites, as they believe the crater was once flooded with water and home to an ancient river delta more than 3.5 billion years ago.
NASA s Mars rover landing today is a feat of Perseverance astronomy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from astronomy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
NASA, Perseverance in epicly successful entry, descent, and landing at Jezero Crater, Mars
February 18, 2021
After years of hard work and labor, NASA succeeded in the most complex landing ever attempted on another planet.
Perseverance safely touchdown at Jezero Crater at an actual time on Earth of 15:43 EST (20:43 UTC) with confirmation of landing received 11 minutes 22 seconds later through the Madrid, Spain facility of the Deep Space Network at 15:55 EST (20:55 UTC).
Arriving at Mars, and the challenges thereof
Historically, there is now with Al-Amal, Tianwen-1, Perseverance’s successes a better than 50% chance of succeeding in placing a spacecraft at Mars, whether that’s inserting it into orbit or landing it on the surface.