NASA’s Perseverance rover set to land on Mars on February 18: Excitement among science enthusiasts is building up as NASA’s Perseverance rover prepares to touch down on Mars on Thursday after a seven-month journey. As part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, the car-size Perseverance rover will hunt for signs of ancient life, collect and cache samples for future return to Earth. The rover, which was launched from Earth on July 30, is headed straight for Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient river delta. When it finally reaches Mars, Perseverance will have traveled 292.5 million miles on its journey from Earth. The touchdown is scheduled for approximately 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 18. (2:25 am on February 19 in India).

Landing will not be easy as NASA picked one of the hardest areas to explore. “If there’s one thing we know, it’s that landing on Mars is never easy. But as NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance has an extraordinary engineering pedigree and mission team. We are excited to invite the entire world to share this exciting event with us!” said NASA Associate Administrator for Communications Marc Etkind.

Anticipating the historic landing, official Twitter handles of NASA and Perseverance have been tweeting details and tidbits about the launch. See what they are tweeting

Where to watch the landing:

Live coverage and landing commentary from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will begin at 2:15 p.m. on the NASA TV Public Channel and the agency’s website, as well as the NASA App, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Daily Motion, and THETA.TV.

About Perseverance

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside a space capsule, was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30. It main job is to seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth. Perseverance will stay on the planet for one Mars year, about 687 days here on Earth.

Perseverance isn’t traveling to Mars by itself. It is also carrying a technology experiment – the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, that will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. If successful, Perseverance will be NASA’s ninth landing on Mars.