Watch replays of the Orion inflight abort test

A week after two space probes from China and United Arab Emirates slipped into orbit around Mars, NASA’s $2.4 billion Perseverance rover, by far the most complex and ambitious of the three, will plunge into the red planet’s atmosphere Thursday for an automated white-knuckle descent.

Watch the launch of Expedition 49, a three-man crew headed for the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off at 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT) Thursday from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.