What Time Is NASA Launch Today and When Will Rover Reach Mars? Watch Live

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is set to launch today at 7:50 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard an Atlas V-541 rocket.

The launch is the first step in a six-month journey to the red planet, with the rover scheduled to touch down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.

The U.S. space agency will be broadcasting the launch live on NASA TV. Coverage begins at 7 a.m. EDT, followed by a post-launch news conference starting at 11:30 a.m. EDT.

If the launch has to be postponed for any reason—such as poor weather or technical issues—NASA has outlined an extended launch period, which ends on August 15.

The launch period was selected because during this time, Earth and Mars are in orbital positions relative to each other that will reduce the difficulty of the mission. Specifically, it will take less power to reach Mars with the two planets in their current alignments.

Over the course of Perseverance's mission, which is scheduled to last one Mars year (around 687 Earth days,) the rover will use its suite of scientific instruments to search for signs of ancient microbial life on the red planet, while also collecting rock and soil samples that could potentially be returned to Earth by future missions.

NASA says Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover the space agency has ever sent to Mars, incorporating several advanced technologies.

For example, the rover is equipped with a new technology known as Terrain Relative Navigation that enables the vehicle to land more precisely and safely than previous rovers. This allowed NASA to choose Jezero Crater as a landing site, which had been considered too risky for previous missions.

"It gives the spacecraft the smarts to basically understand where it is," Mars 2020 engineer Nagin Cox at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California—where the rover was built—told Newsweek.

Being able to land in Jezero Crater, which measures 28 miles across, is significant because researchers think the area was home to an ancient river delta billions of years ago, making it a promising spot to search for signs of microbial life.

As well as Terrain Relative Navigation, Perseverance is equipped with other instruments and technology that will be key to NASA's long-term plans of landing the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024, and sending humans to Mars in the 2030s.

In addition, Perseverance will also carry a unique technology experiment to the red planet—a Martian helicopter known as "Ingenuity." If all goes to plan, this vehicle will become the first aircraft to fly in a controlled manner on another planet.