UPDATED: February 19, 2021 00:40 IST
An illustration provided by Nasa depicting the Mars 2020 spacecraft carrying the Perseverance rover as it approaches the Red Planet. (Photo: AP)
Spacecraft aiming to land on Mars have skipped past the planet, burned up on entry, smashed into the surface, and made it down amid a fierce dust storm only to spit out a single fuzzy grey picture before dying.
Almost 50 years after the first casualty at Mars, Nasa is attempting its hardest Martian touchdown yet.
The rover named Perseverance is headed Thursday for a compact 5-mile-by-4-mile (8-kilometer-by-6.4-kilometer) patch on the edge of an ancient river delta.