NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is set to land on the red planet on Thursday. Perseverance is the agency’s fifth rover on Mars, and engineers managing the mission at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California wrote in a Tuesday news release that the rover was on track to descend at Mars' Jezero Crater at approximately 3:55 p.m. EST. Landing on Mars is risky and around half of all previous Mars landing attempts have succeeded. Once on Mars, the rover will photograph its new home -- sending images back to Earth via NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter -- and ultimately attempt to document proof of ancient microbial life on Mars. "The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission embodies our nation’s spirit of persevering even in the most challenging of situations, inspiring, and advancing science and exploration.

Source: Fox News February 17, 2021 21:33 UTC