'Seven minutes of terror': NASA's Perseverance will land on Mars TODAY

NASA will today try and land its Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars in a crucial moment for the space agency's hopes of colonising the red planet. The descent of the $2.2billion car-sized spacecraft will be live streamed by NASA from 2:15 pm ET (7:15pm GMT) and will show Perseverance trying to endure the so-called'seven minutes of terror'. This refers to the tumultuous conditions which batter the craft as it enters the Martian atmosphere and approaches the surface. Temperatures are expected to exceed 2,000 F and a supersonic parachute will be deployed to try and slow the rover down from its entry speed of around 12,000mph -- quick enough to travel from London to New York in 15 minutes. Perseverance, if all goes to plan, will touch down at the base of an 820-foot-deep (250 meters) crater called Jezero, a former lake which was home to water 3.5 billion years ago. It will drill into Mars and collect geological specimens that will be cached across the planet and retrieved by a follow up mission around 2031.