NASA's Mars Perseverance rover is on the cusp of landing on the Red Planet after a seven-month journey. Here's what happens next. USA TODAY

On the surface, Mars presents itself as a world on the verge of inhospitality.

Average temperatures that hover around negative 81 degrees. A thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere sometimes rendered opaque by planet-wide dust storms that can even be seen from Earth. Gravity thats just one-third of what humans have evolved to tolerate.

But the Red Planets features tell a different story.

Looking at photos captured by satellites in orbit, it doesnt take much imagining to see Mars was likely once home to rivers of running water and enormous crater-lakes. With the right conditions, perhaps this planet that gets its rusty color from iron oxide-rich rocks could once have been suitable for life or at least life as we know it.

This dichotomy has left experts asking one of the most difficult-to-answer questions in science today: What happened to Mars, and can the same thing happen here on Earth?

We know that Mars had a bad past, said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate. We used our Spirit and Opportunity rovers (2003) to follow the water in search of answers as to why this once ocean world is now dry and desolate. Following those missions came our Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 and is still operating.

Augmented reality:Mission to Mars: Explore the Perseverance rover

Now its time for NASAs next robotic explorer Perseverance to follow in the dusty tracks of its predecessors. After a 293-million-mile trek across the expanse since its July 2020 launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the upgraded rover is slated to land on the Red Planet at 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday.

Its target: Jezero Crater, a harsh surface feature that was likely once a deep lake fed by rivers of running water.

Perseverance is our robotic astrobiologist, and it will be the first rover NASA has sent to Mars with the explicit goal of searching for signs of ancient life, Zurbuchen said.

But before it can begin roving its targeted landing site at a breakneck 0.1 mph, Perseverance has to pull off a series of risky landing maneuvers all by itself.

In this animation, NASA's Perseverance rover is seen during its "Seven Minutes of Terror," or the entry, descent, and landing process. Using a unique "Sky Crane Maneuver," the 10-foot rover will land on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. Florida Today

Getting to Mars with help from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and interplanetary cruise stage was one thing, but slowing down from thousands of miles an hour to a soft 1.7 mph at landing is another.

This seven-minute process from 3:48 p.m. to 3:55 p.m. is known as the seven minutes of terror. Because signals take 11 minutes to reach Earth, human input in the event of a mishap is impossible. Perseverance is on her own.

The nail-biting entry is made even more tense by the fact that once mission managers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California get the first confirmation of entry, Perseverance will have already landed or crashed in real-time. The unavoidable signal delay, however, is a short hurdle for teams that have been waiting for this moment for a decade.

Landing on Mars is really all about finding a way to stop and land in a safe place, said Al Chen, NASA's entry, descent, and landing lead at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

As it approaches Mars thin atmosphere, the heat shield affixed to the front of Perseverance's protective capsule will bear the brunt of fiery entry while also acting as an airbrake of sorts. A massive 70-foot parachute then automatically deploys, further slowing down the 2,200-pound rover.

While coming down on the parachute, Perseverance needs to figure out where it is, Chen said. Itll jettison the heat shield that protected us during entry, and it will use a radar and a new system we call Terrain-Relative Navigation to figure out where it is.

After the newly exposed radar and cameras have a lock on Perseverances location and landing prospects, its time for the riskiest part: dropping out of the protective capsule with a web of machinery and eight retrorockets, which begin firing to slow the rover down.

About 65 feet from the surface, the still-firing retrorockets slow Perseverances approach to 1.7 mph. The descent stage then kicks off the Sky Crane Maneuver, which uses strong nylon cords to slowly lower the rover to the ground. After confirmation of touchdown, the sky crane severs the cords and flies off to put distance between it and the rover.

Perseverance is expected to begin transmitting photos of its new surroundings immediately after landing.

NASA's Perseverance rover is seen on Mars in this rendering by the agency. The 10-foot robotic vehicle will touch down on the surface on Feb. 18, 2021, after a series of complicated maneuvers.(Photo: NASA)

NASAs 10-foot-long, $2.4 billion Perseverance roveris equipped with suites of technologies designed to aid in the hunt for life.

Sixteen engineering and science cameras support safe navigation and help observe the surface, from extreme close-ups to far away. Some of these are part of larger scientific systems, like an ultraviolet spectrometer and another that uses X-rays.

A 7-foot arm attached to the front of Perseverance includes a powerful drill that can pull core samples from rocks that interest scientists. The samples can then be sealed and stored in tubes inside the rovers main body for more analysis later.

Perseverance also has the capability to remove the stored samples and leave them in designated spots around Jezero Crater. A future mission yet to be scheduled could one day land on the Red Planet, pick up the tubes and then fly off to return them to scientists on Earth.

Unlike older Mars rovers, Perseverance and its Curiosity sibling rely on nuclear power. Essentially a nuclear battery, both rovers use energy generated by the decay of plutonium to charge onboard lithium batteries during dormancy. While the Department of Energy-provided hardware can power Perseverance for up to 14 years, the rovers mission is currently set to last at least one Martian year (two Earth years).

Perseverance even has a friend hitching a ride for this mission: Ingenuity. This 4-pound drone will host the first-ever flight on another planet during a roughly monthlong window. Though Ingenuityhas no science hardware, two cameras will help steer the drone and teach NASA engineers how to fly on a world with an atmosphere just 1% as dense as Earths.

But why look for life past or present in the first place? For Manasvi Lingam, a professor of astrobiology, aerospace, physicsand space sciences at Florida Tech, its the ultimate journey.

Any sign of life will of course be one of the most momentous discoveries in the entire history of humanity, Lingam said. Even if it is extinct life, just knowing that there was something out there is certainly Nobel Prize-level.

Lingam acknowledges that getting even a hint of an answer usually leads to more questions.

Would finding life on Mars inform our perception of how common it is elsewhere in the universe? If life on Mars and Earth appear to be similar, could the millennia-old theory of panspermia that life can spread via asteroids or comets, for example see a resurgence? Or what if the discovery is so foreign that it doesnt appear to rely on the building blocks of life were used to, like DNA and RNA?

All of these questions are really fascinating, Lingam said. If you find something very alien, thats great and we can try to understand what it is.

It might even have some practical implications because humans learn from biology all the time. Thats in fact how weve made a lot of drugs we looked at actual organisms and borrowed ideas from them, he said.

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No follow-up rovers are solidly planned after Perseverance. Nicknamed Percy by her JPL mission managers, shes on her own in Jezero Crater for the foreseeable future.

But what about dropping sample tubes for pickup by a separate mission? Thats still in the works at NASA.

Lingam said a sample return mission has two advantages for scientists: the breadth and number of instruments available on Earth vastly outclass whats available on Perseverance; and despite technological advances, having a human eye looking at samples is still the preferred method.

For his research, Lingam would like to see more missions to Venus a planet that hasnt seen enough investigation surrounding potential for life, he said. Missions like Perseverance, combined with upcoming investigations of other parts of our solar system, will ultimately provide a more holistic view of the history of life.

Theres definitely part of me that wants to believe theres life in the oceans of Europa, that there was life on Mars, and potentially even in the clouds of Venus, Lingam said. Its always more tempting to think of a cosmos that is filled with all kinds of weird and wonderful life, because that would mean were not alone.

One should not allow the belief to cloud ones mind about the data and the scientific method. But I do hope that there is life out there.

Contact Emre Kellyon Twitterat @EmreKelly.

By the numbers: NASA's Perseverance rover

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Timeline: Seven minutes of terror (all times Eastern on Feb. 18)

Visitfloridatoday.com/spaceat 3 p.m. Thursday to watch live as Perseverance targets a landing on the Red Planet.

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NASA Mars mission 2021: Perseverance rover landing date, time