NASA Perseverance Rover Faces 'Seven Minutes of Terror' Before Landing on Mars

 NASA Perseverance Rover Faces 'Seven Minutes of Terror' Before Landing on Mars

Perseverance is expected to take seven minutes to descend from the top of the Martian atmosphere to t

Perseverance may set the stage for scientists to conclusively show whether life has existed beyond Earth

HIGHLIGHTS

• Success will hinge on a sequence of events unfolding without a hitch
• Advanced power tools will drill samples from Martian rock and seal them
• Perseverance is the fifth and most sophisticated rover vehicle by NASA

When NASA's Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside a space capsule, hits the final stretch of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it is set to emit a radio alert as it streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere.

By the time that signal reaches mission managers some 127 million miles (204 million km) away at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, Perseverance will already have landed on the Red Planet - hopefully in one piece.

The six-wheeled rover is expected to take seven minutes to descend from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the planet's surface in less time than the 11-minute-plus radio transmission to Earth. Thus, Thursday's final, self-guided descent of the rover spacecraft is set to occur during a white-knuckled interval that JPL engineers affectionately refer to as the "seven minutes of terror." he planet's surface.