Photo by: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Countdown to the Mars Rover Landing

The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover and Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, are closer to Mars than ever before as touch down at the Jezero crater is scheduled for February 18, 2021. Let’s take a look back at its launch and learn how it will land on the Red Planet.

January 14, 2021

(Updated: February 16, 2021)

Perseverance with Ingenuity strapped to its belly launched on July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Its mission, upon landing on February 18, 2021, at 3:55P EST, is to seek signs of ancient life and collect samples from the Red Planet for examination on Earth.

You can watch NASA’s Perseverance Rover land on Mars LIVE on Discovery’s TikTok on Thursday, Feb 18 starting at 3:15P ET / 12:15P PT. Featuring former NASA Engineer turned YouTube phenom, Mark Rober, stream the historic event as it happens, and experience the first sounds ever heard from microphones on Mars.

Following Perseverance's touch down on Mars, the rover will call a 28-mile-wide crater, home, until its research of collecting rock and soil samples is complete. At one point in time, the Jezero crater contained a lake. Could this mean there was once life on Mars?

More On Mars Exploration

Space's Deepest Secrets | Mars Perseverance 02:58

NASA's Perseverance is a 6-wheeled robotic vehicle that will seek out life on Mars. Learn more about Perseverance’s mission and don't miss Space's Deepest Secrets on February 18 at 10P ET on Science Channel.

Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Perseverance Right Over

A few years ago, after the successful deployment of the Curiosity rover on Mars, the folks at NASA envisioned a bold new plan to send another mission to the red planet. The mission was scheduled to depart in the then-futuristic year of 2020.

Touching down on Mars is not easy. NASA has mentioned that only about 40 percent of missions sent to the Red Planet have been a success. Perseverance will be the fifth rover to attempt landing on the dusty surface.

This illustration shows the events that occur in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month journey that NASA’s Perseverance rover takes to Mars.

Photo by: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA/JPL-Caltech

This illustration shows the events that occur in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month journey that NASA’s Perseverance rover takes to Mars.

The intense stages of entry, descent, and landing, known as EDL, is a multistep process and one that Perseverance must complete on its own. Traveling nearly 12,500 miles per hour, Perseverance will descend on the Red Planet once it has reached the top of the Martian atmosphere. EDL will be complete within seven minutes.

The spacecraft housing Perseverance sheds its cruise stage, which houses solar panels, radios, and fuel tanks used during its flight to Mars about ten minutes before entering the atmosphere. During a guided entry through the atmosphere, small thrusters are fired up to keep Perseverance on course. The heat shield slows down the spacecraft in which the supersonic parachute then deploys. Once the parachute deploys, the heat shield separates away from Perseverance. Key cameras and instruments equipped with radar and a navigation system within the rover is used to zero-in on its powered descent. Perseverance cuts the parachute away and guides itself to the dusty surface using rockets.

As the rover slows to its final descent speed, it initiates the “skycrane” maneuver. The rover uses its mobility system to lock its legs and wheels into a landing position. As soon as Perseverance’s wheels touch the ground, it quickly cuts away the cables it no longer needs for its arrival on Mars. The rover will have safely touched down on the Red Planet.

Next Up

How Exoplanets Became the Next Big Thing in Astronomy

To date, we know of over 5,000 planets outside the solar system. And astronomers suspect that there may be *checks notes* around a trillion more in our galaxy alone. The search for exoplanets is one of the hottest topics in astronomy, with expensive telescopes and giant collaborations all searching for the holy grail of the 21st century: an Earth 2.0, a habitable world like our own.

NASA Has Announced Plans for the Next Decade of Space Missions, And It’s Awesome

Personally speaking, I feel like we’ve been focusing on Mars a little bit too much recently. Sure, the Red Planet is all sorts of awesome – so awesome it may have once been a home for life – but with more than half a dozen orbiters, landers, and rovers, it’s certainly got its due.

Why Astronomers Care About Super-Old Galaxies?

A long time ago, our universe was dark.It was just 380,000 years after the big bang. Up until that age, our entire observable cosmos was less than a millionth of its present size. All the material in the universe was compressed into that tiny volume, forcing it to heat up and become a plasma. But as the universe expanded and cooled, eventually the plasma changed into a neutral gas as the first atoms formed.

What We’ve Already Learned From James Webb? (Hint: it’s a lot)

That was worth the wait. Just a quick handful of months since its historic launch on Christmas Day, the James Webb Space Telescope has flown to its observing position, unfolded its delicate instruments and ultra-sized mirror, and run through a suite of checks and alignments and calibrations. The team at NASA behind the telescopes released their first batch of images from the science runs, and besides being gorgeous, they're powerful.

What Comes After the Moon and Mars?

Space hotels may be in our future.

Watch Out! Amateur Astronomer Watches as Jupiter Gets Whacked

Jupiter is the OG best friend in the solar system. It finds all the tiny little comets and asteroids heading for the vulnerable inner planets and takes one for the team, chewing up the dangerous rocks in its thick atmosphere. It happened again just recently, and this time an amateur astronomer caught it in the act.

NASA Has a New Supersonic Jet and It’s Super-Quiet

There’s more to NASA than space. The agency’s full acronym stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I’ve covered plenty of interesting stories in the space sector, so it’s time to the aeronautics side some love too.

Six Planets are Retrograde, What Does that Mean for You?

Spoiler alert: It's an optical illusion.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Skin Print, Testing Birth Control, Race To Bring Mars Home

You’re going to learn about efforts to print astronaut skin in space with their own blood, the mystifying side effects of birth control, and the race to bring soil samples back from Mars!

NASA's New Rocket is Taller than the Statue of Liberty

The massive space launch system was unveiled last week. Following successful completion of upcoming simulation tests, NASA will set a date for the first of the Artemis II lunar missions.

Related To: