Editor's Note:
Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
He is the author of several science books for the general public, including the best-selling audiobook "The Theory of Everything: The Search to Explain All of Reality."
It also produces a series of science education videos.
Follow him on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this comment are solely yours.
See more opinion pieces on CNN.
(CNN) -
In the depths of space, a speeding projectile is heading away from Earth and heading for a rendezvous with destiny.
The NASA spacecraft holding a robot with the noble name Perseverance is on its way to Mars.
Perseverance will explore the Martian surface, tasked with searching for evidence of life and collecting samples that researchers hope will one day return to Earth for analysis.
Discovering that life evolved on a planet other than Earth would change humanity's understanding of its place in the cosmos.
The last time such a paradigm shift breakthrough occurred was in 1610, when Galileo first saw the moons of Jupiter, proving that the Earth (and, by extension, humanity) is not at the center of the universe.
And since our heavenly neighbor once harbored liquid water, it's an excellent place to search for ancient life.
Exploration is what humanity does.
It is in our nature.
We have explored our planet and one day we hope to leave Earth to explore first the solar system and then the stars.
But first we must learn to do it.
And if Perseverance succeeds and finds evidence of ancient Martian life, it will tell us something enormous about the universe that awaits us.
LOOK: Krispy Kreme celebrates the arrival of the Perseverance rover to Mars with a donut
On Thursday, NASA engineers will send the signal that will direct the dropship to the surface.
This is by far the most dangerous part of the mission.
Since Mars is currently about 200 million kilometers from Earth, it takes more than eleven minutes for a radio signal to travel between the planets.
But the descent sequence takes less than that, seven minutes, in fact.
Therefore, the landing process on Mars has to be fully automated, done by the spacecraft itself, relying on the ingenuity of NASA engineers and programmers to get it right.
And, as good as they are, they have reason to be nervous.
Only about half of the missions to Mars have reached the surface successfully.
Not surprisingly, the landing phase is called "seven minutes of terror."
Once the landing craft begins to descend to the planet, an incredibly complex series of steps must be executed correctly.
First, the Martian atmosphere is used to slow down the ship.
A heat shield protects the delicate probe during this stage.
The shield is necessary, as temperatures during descent will rise to 2,370 ° F (1,300 ° C).
When the spacecraft is about 7 miles (11 km) above the surface, shooting at about 540 mph (865 kph), it will deploy a parachute to reduce speed.
Once the ship slows down enough it will drop the parachute and heat shield and the rockets will take over.
During the last 60 seconds or so, the spacecraft will descend slowly with the energy of a rocket, until it approaches the surface.
At that point, the spacecraft will float and lower the Perseverance landing module onto the Martian surface using nylon cables.
When Perseverance is on the ground, the ropes will come off and the landing gear will shoot out to crash away.
This landing process sounds extremely complicated, but this is exactly how NASA's Curiosity rover successfully arrived on Mars.
Curiosity landed in 2012 and is still working.
Curiosity has been amazingly successful, and NASA hopes Perseverance will have an equally successful story.
Perseverance will surface about 2,300 miles from the Curiosity rover, in the Jezero crater on Mars, which was once a river delta, emptying into a lake.
Researchers believe that if life ever existed on Mars, then the place to look for it is a humid place and minerals from a fossilized river delta are an ideal vault for storing the evidence.
Two of Perseverance's other goals are to study the Martian surface geology and climate, but it is also tasked with a fourth mission to make measurements that will help scientists and engineers plan future manned missions.
Perseverance is also the first rover designed to collect and preserve rock samples, which will hopefully one day return to Earth.
The current spacecraft cannot achieve this.
You will have to wait for a possible future mission.
This second mission, if it occurs, is scheduled for 2026, with an approximate return date of 2031.
In addition to Perseverance's main missions, the probe also contains what is called a "technology demonstration mission."
This is the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.
This helicopter weighs around four pounds (1.8 kg) and is very similar to a drone like the one you could fly from your backyard.
The small, autonomous probe is the first example of a device that will fly in the thin Martian atmosphere.
The probe will help researchers decide in which directions to send the Perseverance rover to explore.
While Perseverance's main mission will last one Martian year (687 Earth days), if the Curiosity rover is an example, Perseverance could operate for a decade, collecting a treasure trove of data.
If the landing sequence is successful, Perseverance will contribute greatly to our understanding of the Martian environment and may provide the first evidence of ancient Martian life.
While the Perseverance probe is very exciting, it is not the only one that is scheduled to reach Mars.
Two other probes were also launched at the same time.
One was the Chinese probe Tianwen-1 which, if successful, will bring a rover to the Martian surface perhaps in May or June.
This will make China the second country to successfully bring a rover to the surface of Mars.
(The Russian Mars 3 mission in 1971 landed, but failed less than two minutes after touching the Martian surface and after sending a single gray image. The Tianwen-1 orbiter entered Martian orbit on February 10.
In addition, the United Arab Emirates sent a Martian orbiter probe, by the name of Hope.
This orbiter reached Mars on February 9.
LOOK: Explore Jezero crater, the future home of NASA's Perseverance rover
Hopefully NASA gets another mark in the win column.
I know I'll hold my breath for those seven minutes of fear.
rover Perseverance