NASA Mars Rover Landing 2021: Time And Where To Watch Live?

With a little perseverance, NASA's rover of the same name will hopefully land on Mars this Thursday.

The space agency is preparing for a big day tomorrow, as its Mars Perseverance Rover is set to land on the surface of the red planet at approximately 3:55 p.m. EST. The mission is considered unlike any other because it will be the first time a rover will be entering the Martian atmosphere with the intent to learn about its ancient life.

The Mars Perseverance Rover, better known simply as Perseverance, is one of the five rovers that have already attempted to land on the Martian surface. The rover is expected to land on the Jezero Crater -- a basin believed to have housed an ancient river billions of years ago. Because Perseverance aims to study signs of past life on Mars, scientists believe the Jezero Crater is an ideal spot to land since the area is believed to still have preserved signs of any life that may have existed in the distant past.

The attempt to successfully touch down on the said area won't be an easy feat, however. With its steep cliffs, sand dunes, and boulder fields, Jezero Crater isn't exactly considered an ideal spot to land a rover. Scientists have admitted that landing on Mars, in general, is a difficult task. In a statement released by NASA Wednesday, only about 50% of all previous Mars landing attempts have succeeded, and the geological barriers that Perseverance may face in Jezero certainly won't be making the task any easier.

“The Perseverance team is putting the final touches on the complex choreography required to land in Jezero Crater,” said Jennifer Trosper, deputy project manager for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “No Mars landing is guaranteed, but we have been preparing a decade to put this rover’s wheels down on the surface of Mars and get to work.”

Perseverance is set to characterize the planet's geology and past climate in order to pave the way for human exploration on Mars. The mission will also be the very first to collect Martian samples to bring back to Earth.

The Mars rover's Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) will be made available to watch live on NASA TV. The EDL of any rover or spacecraft is considered the most crucial when entering another celestial object's atmosphere, which is why engineers consider these brief moments as the "seven minutes of terror."

Commentary on Perseverance's EDL will commence 2:15 p.m. EST, Thursday, on the space agency's Live Television, where the rest of the world can witness yet another extraordinary attempt of humans taking a step further in understanding the universe.