Nasa Mars mission is a 'go' and weather looks positive to launch Perseverance rover this week, officials say

Cloud could disrupt launch, official forecasts say – but probably not

Monday 27 July 2020 14:23 BST

The Mars 2020 Rover is seen in the spacecraft assembly area clean room, December 27, 2019 during a media tour at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

Nasa is ready to launch its mission to Mars this week, the space agency has said.

It has conducted its review ahead of the planned launch on Thursday, it announced, meaning that it everything is still in place to go on schedule.

"The Launch Readiness Review has concluded and the team remains a GO for launch for @NASAPersevere!" Mr Bridenstine wrote on Twitter, linking out to a Nasa article describing how to watch the launch from home.

The official forecast also makes clear that the launch is likely to go ahead as scheduled on Thursday.

The chance of weather that gets in the way of the launch is put at 20 per cent, official forecasts suggest. The primary concerns are about clouds that could prevent the rocket from taking off safely.

Nasa has scheduled the launch for 7.50am local eastern time on Thursday.

Unlike some other recent launches – such as the first launch of astronauts from US soil in nearly a decade, which happened in a SpaceX ship last month – the launch has a wide window to allow for mission controllers to wait for any unfavourable conditions to pass. There will be two hours during which the rocket can set off, ending at 9.50am local eastern time.

The mission is set to liftoff on 30 July from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

It will be carried on the Atlas V rocket, which is operated by United Launch Alliance, a collaboration between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

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1/10Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust standing at three-light-years tall, bursting with jets of gas from fledgling stars buried within, was captured by Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010

Nasa/ESA/STScI

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

The first ever selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa's Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012

Nasa/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Death of a star: This image from Nasa's Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy

Nasa

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, pictured here on 1 January 2019 by a camera on Nasa's New Horizons spaceraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth

Getty

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

Nasa

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

The first ever image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving Nasa, and released on 10 April 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light-years from Earth

Getty

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Pluto, as pictured by Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft as it flew over the dwarf planet for the first time ever in July 2015

Nasa/APL/SwRI

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

A coronal mass ejection as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun

Nasa

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks running downhill on the surface Mars were believed to be evidence of contemporary flowing water. It has since been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand

Nasa/JPL/University of Arizona

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Morning Aurora: Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station in October 2015

Nasa/Scott Kelly

The mission will carry the Perseverance rover, which is scheduled to land on the surface in February 2021. When it does, it will look for signs of both habitable conditions in the past – as well as any evidence of ancient life that may once have been present on the red planet.

If the launch is able to happen during the current window, it will have to be pushed back by more than two years, to wait for the next opportunity when the planets will align to allow for a launch.

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