The NASA Perseverance rover, which has been on a 292.5 million-mile journey from Earth since July 30, is expected to land on Mars Thursday around 3:55 p.m. During the landing coverage, NASA's mission control team will be able to confirm if the rover safely landed on the surface of Mars. Landing on Mars: '7 minutes of terror'If successful, Perseverance will be NASA's ninth landing on Mars and the agency's fifth rover. Perseverance is targeting a 28-mile-wide ancient lake bed and river delta, the most challenging site yet for a NASA spacecraft landing on Mars. The Mars landing engines, which include eight retrorockets, will fire to slow the descent to 1.7 miles per hour -- or the average walking speed of a human.

Source: The Nation February 18, 2021 11:26 UTC