Mars rover landing - as it happened: Nasa Perseverance rover sends back first pictures from successful landing

Nasa is the third spacecraft to arrive at Mars this month, although the first to actually drop down onto its surface. And there’s a good reason why the red planet is so busy at this time of year.

The arrangement of Mars and the Earth mean that the optimal point for launching a mission to get there only comes around once every two years and two months, when the orbits of the two planets line up to make the journey as short as possible.

As such, anyone hoping to send a spacecraft off to Mars has to wait for one of these windows to open up. It last did in July, when not only Nasa but the Chinese and United Arab Emirates’ space agencies set off on journeys that have finished this month.

If they had missed that window, they would have been left waiting until 2022 to set off. That looked dangerously possible for Nasa’s mission last year, but it ended up defying delays caused by coronavirus and even an earthquake to get in at the end of the launch window and then arrive at Mars today.

Nasa has some great resources on its website about launch windows. Here you can find all the information you’d ever need – as well as educational resources, should you want to use today’s goings-on as an education in algebra, either for yourself or anyone you are home schooling.

Why is today’s landing so important? The short answer is aliens (and also humans). The medium answer is that we might finally answer some of the most profound questions humanity has asked, as well as finding out how we’ll be able to travel to Mars. And the long answer is here.

Another big facility has been lit up red to mark today’s events.

It joins a whole host of buildings – including Nasa ones – that have been lit up in the colour of Mars.

Nasa’s Perseverance rover has posted an animated preview of what it hopes to achieve in a few hours.

As the dramatic music attempts to illustrate, this is by far the most difficult part of its journey. The entire mission hinges on it.

With less than three hours to go until the action begins, here’s a reminder of how it should play out.

3:38pm EST (8:38pm GMT): The spacecraft transporting Perseverance will separate from its entry capsule.

3:48pm EST: The craft is expected to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere, travelling at approximately 12,100 mph.

3:52 pm EST: The parachute will attempt to slow its supersonic descent. The exact deployment time will be managed by Range Trigger technology.

3:54 pm EST: Once the parachute has been deployed the heat shield will briefly detach, followed by the back shell that is attached to the parachute.

3:55 pm EST: Finally, the rover will use retrorockets to slow its descent and hit the landing site.

You can read a full run-down of the schedule here.

It’s Nasa’s robot – but it’s carrying a lot of other space agencies’ hopes, too. The Perseverance team have posted a video highlighting the work of partner space agencies, who have lent a hand with the mission in various ways.

It’s 7.15pm in the UK – or 2.15pm on the east coast – and Nasa’s live coverage has begun. Here’s everything you need to follow along from home.

You won’t actually be able to see the landing as it happens, because the technology isn’t yet ready for that. Instead, you’ll be able to watch as mission controllers receive that indicate the lander has – hopefully – successfully made its way to the surface.

The rover – or its social media managers – have thanked the team behind the operation as it heads into its stressful final hours.

Nasa’s mission controllers have done all they can, and the landing itself will be controlled by Perseverance. Engineers are not actually able to control the spacecraft – the transmitter is turned off, and the signals would take too long to get there to be useful anyway.

But the rover has all of its landing instructions already programmed in, and the ability to make adjustments to its own landing.

It’s about an hour until Perseverance hits the ground. It’s just over an hour until we’ll know for sure whether that’s happened: Nasa will receive the all-important signal at 8.55 UK time, though it will actually have happened 11 minutes earlier, because it takes that long for the message to make its way from Mars.