The area of Mars where the Perseverance rover will land Thursday. Photo Courtesy NASA

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/watch-online/

The Perseverance rover is slated to land today in the 28-mile wide Jezero Crater on Mars, just north of the Martian Equator. The landing area is believed to have high potential for finding signs of past microbial life. Scientists believe that 3-4 billion years ago, a river in the area flowed into a large body of water leaving sediment containing carbonite minerals and clay which could have collected and preserved signs of microbial life.

Samples which will be collected on the ancient lakebed will be used to answer the question that has been asked for many centuries, “Are we alone in the universe,” and decades of work by scientists from around the world have led to today’s landing.

NASA has listed the following Perseverance Landing Day milestones:

 Step 1 | Cruise Stage Separation

 Step 2 | Atmospheric Entry

 Step 3 | Peak Heating

 Step 4 | Peak Deceleration

 Step 5 | Parachute Deployment

 Step 6 | Heat Shield Separation

 Step 7 | Radar Lock

 Step 8 | Terrain Relative Navigation Solution

 Step 9 | Backshell Separation

 Step 10 | Powered Descent

 Step 11 | Rover Separation/Sky Crane

 Step 12 | Touchdown!