The Perseverance rover will face a daunting series of events as it descends to the surface of Mars on February 18. It will use a heat shield, a parachute, and rockets attached to a structure above the rover, known as a sky crane. The crane will slowly lower the rover to a touchdown in Jezero Crater, which was filled with water billions of years ago. Perseverance will look for evidence of life, cache samples of rocks and dirt for a future mission to retrieve and bring back to Earth, and deploy a small helicoper to test the technology. [NASA/JPL]