NASA’s Mars probe is set to land on the red planet today (Feb. 18) at 3:55 pm EST (2055 GMT) – or at least when NASA detects whether it has landed.
But by the time Earthlings hear of perseverance for the first time Since the landing attempt, The rover will have already spent at least 11 minutes hanging on the surface of Mars. This is because it currently takes about 11 minutes and 22 seconds for radio signals to travel between Earth and Mars, NASA He said in a statement.
So Perseverance’s actual expected time of arrival, which is the time Jezero Crater is supposed to land, is 3:44 PM EST (2044 GMT). But we won’t know the exact time to land – or whether the rover arrived intact – until 11 minutes, 22 seconds after the fact.
You can watch the Mars landing live here And on the SPACE.com homepage, with permission from NASA, starting at 2:15 PM EST (1915 GMT). It is expected to land at 3:55 PM EST (2055 GMT).
Related: How to watch NASA’s Perseverance craft land on the surface of Mars
Live updates: NASA’s Mars probe mission
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NASA said that at the time of the perseverance landing attempt, Mars will be about 127 million miles (205 million km) from Earth. In the mission description. (The planet The distance from the ground It changes as the two planets orbit the sun in their respective orbits.)
The radio signals used by NASA to communicate with perseverance and other missions travel at the speed of light, which is approximately 670,616,629 miles per hour (1,079,252,848 km / h). This cosmic velocity limit means that mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) cannot immediately contact or operate the vehicle – or any other distant spacecraft, for that matter.
During the lander landing, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MRO) will act as a radio communications relay for the landing. The probe will listen to the messages from perseverance and send the information back to NASA’s Deep Space Antennas on Earth.
Related: How a fleet of spacecraft will see NASA’s persistent spacecraft land on Mars
Visit Space.com Today for a complete coverage of the Mars probe landing on the red planet.
Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her at hannekescience. Follow us on Twitter Embed a Tweet And on Facebook.
