Why NASA's Perseverance rover mission is so significant — and challenging

Perseverance is about to attempt a landing on Mars as part of NASA's "most ambitious" rover mission ever.

The Perseverance rover, which launched in July 2020 on a mission to search for signs of ancient life on Mars, is scheduled for a landing attempt on Thursday afternoon, with the rover expected to touch down in the Jezero Crater at about 3:55 p.m. Eastern.

It's a highly significant mission, as "this is the first time in history where we're going to go to Mars with an explicit mission to find life on another world — ancient life on Mars," as then-NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine explained last year before the launch. There are a number of firsts associated with the mission, in fact, as CNN notes that "along for the ride with Perseverance is an experiment to fly a helicopter, called Ingenuity, on another planet for the first time," and the aim is to also get the "first recordings of sound on the red planet."

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NASA's Thomas Zurbuchen describes this as "NASA's most ambitious Mars rover mission yet," adding that the "landing team will have its hands full getting us to Jezero Crater — the most challenging Martian terrain ever targeted for a landing."

The "riskiest portion" of the mission, NASA notes, is what's known as the "seven minutes of terror" as the rover makes its way down to Mars. Since the radio signal will take 11 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth, The New York Times Times writes, "if anything were to go wrong, it would already be too late by the time people in NASA's mission operations center got word." CNN also notes this is the heaviest rover NASA will ever try to land.

"I will be extremely nervous," acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk acknowledged to the Times.

Coverage of the landing attempt can be viewed via NASA's YouTube channel below. Brendan Morrow