NASA's Perseverance rover on course for Mars landing this week, to search for signs of past life
NASA's $2.4 billion Perseverance rover will plunge into the red planet's atmosphere Thursday for an automated white-knuckle landing.
If it survives the "seven minutes of terror" from atmospheric entry to its rocket-powered touchdown in Jezero Crater, the nuclear-powered Perseverance will proceed on its mission to search for evidence of past microbial life in deposits left over from a now-vanished lake.
"Perseverance is our robotic astrobiologist, and it will be the first rover NASA has sent to Mars with the explicit goal of searching for signs of ancient life," said Robert Zurbuchen, NASA's chief of space operations.
"It will build upon what we currently know from our previous rovers, orbiters and landers. And it will attempt to answer an age-old question that has eluded humanity for generations: whether life has ever existed elsewhere beyond our own planet, our Earth."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nasa-mars-landing-perseverance/
NASA's $2.4 billion Perseverance rover will plunge into the red planet's atmosphere Thursday for an automated white-knuckle landing.
If it survives the "seven minutes of terror" from atmospheric entry to its rocket-powered touchdown in Jezero Crater, the nuclear-powered Perseverance will proceed on its mission to search for evidence of past microbial life in deposits left over from a now-vanished lake.
"Perseverance is our robotic astrobiologist, and it will be the first rover NASA has sent to Mars with the explicit goal of searching for signs of ancient life," said Robert Zurbuchen, NASA's chief of space operations.
"It will build upon what we currently know from our previous rovers, orbiters and landers. And it will attempt to answer an age-old question that has eluded humanity for generations: whether life has ever existed elsewhere beyond our own planet, our Earth."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nasa-mars-landing-perseverance/