As you might imagine, planning for the entry, descent, and landing of a car-sized rover isn’t an easy task, especially since Perseverance will be performing its entire landing sequence on its own.
“I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that entry-descent-landing is one of the most critical and dangerous parts of the mission,” said Allen Chen, who leads the landing part of Perseverance’s mission, at a
NASA press briefing. “Success is never assured, and that’s especially true when we’re trying to land the biggest, heaviest, and most complicated rover we’ve ever built.”
Perseverance is 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms), whereas NASA’s Curiosity Rover, which landed on the Red Planet in 2012, is 1,982 pounds (899 kg). Perseverance is also about 4.72 inches (12 cm) longer than Curiosity.