Nasa set to land Perseverance rover and helicopter on Mars
- Perseverance the fifth rover sent by US to Red Planet
- Nasa wants to fly helicopter on Mars for the first time
After a seven-month journey, Nasa’s Perseverance rover prepares to touch down on Mars on Thursday after first negotiating a risky landing procedure that will mark the start of its multi-year search for signs of ancient microbial life.
Transported aboard the spacecraft is the small Ingenuity helicopter for low-altitude aerial surveillance of Mars.
The Mars 2020 mission, which set off late from Florida in late July, includes the largest ever vehicle to be dispatched to the Red Planet.
Built at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it weighs a tonne, has a robotic arm that’s two metres long, has 19 cameras, and two microphones to record the Martian soundscape.
Should it arrive intact, Perseverance will be only the fifth rover to successfully complete the journey since Pathfinder in 1997. All have been American and the last, Curiosity, is still active.
About 3:55pm EST Thursday (2055 GMT), Perseverance will place its six wheels on a landing site described as “spectacular” by Ken Farley, a Nasa scientist.